High voltage cell power supply for modular multilevel converters

Modular multilevel converters (MMCs) require isolated power supplies at their cells (modules). For high voltage MMC cells with considerable power consumption, simple flyback converters are no more applicable as power supplies; however, input-series output-parallel (ISOP) flyback converters are suitable provided that simplicity and cost-effectiveness are preserved. In this paper, a simple 100W 2.8kV-to-36V 3-stage ISOP flyback converter is proposed as high voltage cell power supply (HV-CPS). In this paper, the HV-CPS's implementation challenges are addressed and their solutions are provided. Via the full-scale prototype of the proposed HV-CPS, its successful operation is experimentally demonstrated.