Capacitor Voltage Compensation of Flying Capacitor Multi-Level Converter for High-Speed Current Control

Carrier frequency of N-level flying capacitor converter (FCMLC) is equivalently (N-1) times higher than that of the 2-level converter with the same carrier frequency. In consequence, its control bandwidth is extended. However, updating the command value in that equivalent carrier period causes capacitor voltages to deviate from predetermined voltages. It is caused by mismatches between charging and discharging times of flying capacitors. Imbalanced flying capacitor voltages cause problems such as increase of harmonics in the output current and applied voltages to the devices. In this study, we derive the discrete-time state-space equation of FCMLC considering flying capacitor voltages and analyze stabilities of flying capacitors. Depending on the analysis, a compensation method for capacitor voltages is proposed, and the effectiveness of it is verified by the experiments.