FS-MPC Algorithm for Optimized Operation of a Hybrid Active Neutral Point Clamped Converter

The design for reliability has gained a lot of attention in power electronic community in the past few years. The aim is to optimize the design in order to achieve desired reliability goals with minimum margins. However, in most applications, there are stressing conditions, which result in high stress and therefore require higher margins. As an opportunity, adapting the control of the power electronic converters to equally redistribute the stress of the devices can reduce the stressing conditions and also reduce the design margins. This is of great importance for multilevel topologies and in particular the Active Neutral Point Clamped (ANPC) topology. This paper introduces a Finite-Set Model Predictive Control algorithm designed for achieving a balanced device junction temperature in a Hybrid SiC ANPC converter. The inner switches of the converter are replaced by SiC MOSFETs and the control algorithm is designed to utilize the low switching losses of the devices. The obtained experimental results are compared to carrier based benchmark algorithm. It is demonstrated that the temperature difference between the devices is within 1°C and the dc-link voltage deviation is within 0.5V.