Assessment of the Topology and

Control of Three-Level Inverters for

Low-Voltage Distributed Generation

by
Jilong Yao

A Thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy of University of London and
Diploma of Imperial College

Control and Power Group

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Imperial College London
University of London
2006
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Abstract

Recent technological advances in power generation and increased need for more reliable

and flexible power supply are pushing towards deployment of distributed generation (DG).

For a major portion of DG technologies, an inverter is used as the interface to the load

and the grid. Therefore, both the system dynamics and the inverter topology and control

issues of inverter based DG systems should be studied.

First, the system dynamics and stability with inverter interfaced DG systems and

various loading conditions are analyzed. A fuel cell (FC) generator model has been chosen

to represent DG technology of which several operational modes corresponding to different

control strategies of its inverter interface are investigated. Their performances are tested

and compared with respect to network security and stability. The results suggest that an

adequately designed inverter control scheme can not only contribute to the system voltage

and frequency control but also alleviate potential instability problems and extend stability

region during heavy loading conditions.

To further investigate the control and power quality aspects, the topology and

control issues of using an inverter in low voltage DG systems are studied. Using three-

level inverters in DG systems, one can achieve high power quality outputs with realistic

switching frequency. There are two possible topologies for the use of three-level neutral-

point-clamped (NPC) inverters in four-wire systems, the three-leg inverter with an ex-

tra balancing circuit, and the four-leg one. The former can guarantee balanced DC-link

mid-point voltage, but with the disadvantages of insufficient DC utilization and an extra

controller needed. The four-leg topology offers full DC utilization but a three-dimensional

space vector modulation (3D-SVM) scheme should be designed. In this thesis, a novel al-

gorithm for 3D-SVM is proposed for controlling a four-leg three-level inverter. The issues
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of vector selection and switching sequence determination are described. Simulation results

are compared with those of a three-leg inverter to assess the effectiveness of the proposed

3D-SVM and to establish the advantages of the four-leg topology over the three-leg one.

In four-wire systems, the dc-link mid-point voltage variation of three-level NPC inverters

is significant because of the existence of unbalanced loads. This thesis presents the study

of dc-link capacitor sizing with respect to mid-point voltage variation, when a three-level

NPC inverter is used in four-wire systems, where positive, negative and zero sequence load

currents are concerned. For the three-leg inverter, this study can be used to analyze the

trade-off between adding a balancing circuit and increasing the capacitor sizes. For the

four-leg inverter, the mid-point voltage control capability and limitation is addressed. To

design the controller for the extra balancing circuit using three-leg inverters, the mathe-

matical model of an inverter interfaced DG system is presented. The model without the

balancing circuit is to investigate the unstable interaction between mid-point voltage vari-

ation and external load controls, indicating the necessity of a balancing circuit. The full

inverter and balancing circuit model establishes the base of designing the controller. The

effectiveness of the control design is proved by simulation. Finally, a comparison among a

three-leg inverter without a balancing circuit, a three-leg inverter with a balancing circuit,

and a four-leg inverter, is shown to establish the comprehensive and necessary background

of using three-level NPC inverters for low voltage DG systems.