Modeling and Simulation

This chapter provides some guidelines for modeling and simulation of the complex dynamics of the modular multilevel converter (MMC). It describes the time‐domain models with different levels of complexity ranging from detailed switching to aggregated averaging and gives useful guidelines for implementation in popular simulation packages. The chapter presents a vectorization simulation technique for N cascaded electrical circuits and their modulators and control. The submodule‐level switched (SLS) model can be used for studies focusing on capacitor balancing methods and for loss evaluation. In the averaged (aggregated) leg‐level averaged (LLA) and arm‐level averaged (ALA) models, only the sum capacitor voltage of each arm is modeled, allowing reduced complexity and shorter simulation times. The submodule‐level averaged (SLA) and submodule‐level switched (SLS) models include each submodule capacitor voltage. Some simulation tools allow vectorization, which simplifies the task of setting up the model, particularly for a large number of submodules per arm N.