Generalized Sensorless Capacitor Voltage Balancing technique for Modular Multilevel Converter with increased output voltage levels

Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) needs appropriate sub-module capacitor voltage balancing for proper operation. As discontinuous modulation has less switching instants, it produces less switching loss. So, this paper proposes generalized sensorless capacitor voltage balancing approach feasible with continuous PWM as well as discontinuous PWM (DPWM) for MMC for medium voltage applications. With the proposed method N+1 and 2N+1 output voltage levels can be attained with N number of sub-modules (SMs) per arm. This proposed method does not require changing the settings of the balancing signals for different switching frequencies. The comprehensive simulations have been carried out with the application of the continuous and discontinuous PWM techniques on MMC using MATLAB/Simulink software.