Experimental Verification of a Front-to-Front (FTF) System Consisting of Two Modular Multilevel Cascade Converters Based on Double-Star Chopper Cells

This paper presents an experimental discussion on modular multilevel cascade converters based on double-star chopper cells (MMCC-DSCC). Hereinafter, a single MMCC-DSCC is referred to simply as a “DSCC”. A couple of DSCCs are used to form a front-to-front (FTF) system capable of dc voltage matching and galvanic isolation between two dc grids. The FTF system can be considered as a dc–ac–dc power conversion system including an ac-link high-power transformer. The higher the ac-link frequency, the smaller and lighter are the ac-link transformer and dc capacitors. When the so-called “phase-shifted-carrier PWM” is applied to the DSCC, theoretical analysis and computer simulation have confirmed that a ratio of the carrier frequency with respect to the ac-link frequency can be reduced to 5/2. This paper designs, constructs, and tests a 400-Vdc 10-kW downscaled FTF system with a carrier frequency of 450 Hz and an ac-link frequency of 180 Hz, where their ratio is 5/2. Experimental waveforms obtained from the downscaled system are compared with simulated ones obtained from a software package, PSCAD/EMTDC, under the same operating and circuit conditions. They agree well each other not only under steady states but also under transient states.