A High Voltage Gain Capable MMC for Offshore Wind Farms: Frequency Component Analysis and Minimization of Capacitor Voltage Ripple

Modular multilevel converter (MMC) and HVdc technology together provide an indispensable solution to integrate offshore wind farms with onshore ac grid. However, the bulky size of MMC and voltage boosting transformers (VBTs) pose a big challenge to keep the footprint and cost of the onshore-platform low. With this background, a full-bridge submodule (SM) modified MMC and a suitably modified switching function are proposed, which utilize the negative SM voltage to achieve ac side voltage boosting. How much negative SM voltages are to be applied across the arms is determined by the group submodule ratio (GSR) parameter, introduced in the switching function. The acquired boosting ability not only shrinks the voltage boosting requirement of VBTs but also reduces the semiconductor switches (upto 10%) and/or the SM count (8%–30%). Analytical solutions derived for the SM capacitor sizing are also presented. The analysis is further utilized to obtain a novel circulating current injection scheme (CCIS), which utilizes phasor analysis to obtain the values of circulating current control parameters. The CCIS suppresses SM capacitor voltage ripple, especially fundamental, and reduces the capacitance requirement by 10%–15% for a wide range of GSR. Representative simulation results are showcased, and the theoretical claims are validated by hardware experiment.