Direct Multivariable Control of Modular Multilevel Converters

While Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) have become state of the art in many high power/high voltage applications like HVDC, other important future applications (i.e. multiterminal-DC-grids, wind parks, electric ships, ...) are still under development. The increased number of variables available for essentially improved control of MMC has to be made accessible and fully used by improved control concepts. Future progress in hardware, especially smaller submodule capacitors, is tightly interrelated to progress of control performance. The same applies to fully electronic fault management and protection at system level, which will be very valuable and important in future. A novel multivariable control concept for MMC, according to these requirements, is presented and explained. Its performance is investigated by extensive simulation results.