Effect of Arm Inductor on Harmonic Reduction in Modular Multilevel Converter

This paper presents the effects of arm inductance on the elimination of harmonics contents from the output signal. Harmonics in the output signal is caused by circulating current. Arm inductor is used to suppress the harmonics contents results from circulating current. The circuit act as a bandpass filter that allows certain frequencies by setting a specific value of the inductor. This approach will reduce the control complexity of Modular Multilevel Converter and will eliminate the use of a filter at the output. Moreover, the selection of the specific value of inductor will minimize the size, cost of the converter and will improve the quality of output power. A details 5-level Modular Multilevel Converter is designed in MATLAB/Simulink to analyze the effect of arm inductance on the harmonic contents.