A GaN-Based Battery Energy Storage System for Three-Phase Residential Application with Series-Stacked Devices and Three-Level Neutral Point Clamped Topology

In this paper a battery energy storage system (BESS) is proposed for three-phase residential application. The idea is to apply Gallium Nitride (GaN) devices in order to achieve the advantage of very low switching power loss and relatively high efficiency. The GaN-based BESS includes a bidirectional half-bridge dc-dc converter with series-stacked transistors and a three-phase grid-connected inverter with three-level (3L) neutral point clamped (NPC) topology. Series-stacked devices and 3L NPC topology are selected due to the voltage rating limitation of the GaN devices (650 V). The power stage design and the controller design are studied. The dq controller is aimed to control the active power and to compensate the reactive power for the local load. Finally, OrCAD Spice and MATLAB SIMULINK simulation results are discussed and validated.