Passive Capacitor Voltage Balancing of SiC-Based Three-Level Dual-Active-Bridge Converter Using Hybrid NPC-Flying Capacitor Structure

Three-level (TL) dual-active-bridge (DAB) converter serves a critical role in the medium-voltage (MV) solid-state-transformers in which high voltage rating and bidirectional power flow are required. The regular neutral-point-clamping (NPC) topology is easily subjected to capacitor voltage unbalance due to nonideal operating conditions. In this article, a hybrid structure incorporating NPC and flying capacitor (FC) is presented to resolve the voltage unbalance issue. The key advantages include minimal additional hardware efforts and no need to resort to active control. The FC behaves as a buffer to leverage the upper and lower capacitor so that passive voltage balance between the two dc-link capacitors can be achieved on a switching cycle basis. Closed-form analysis further reveals the impact of FC value on voltage unbalance. Moreover, the appropriate modulation scheme, switching condition, and commutation loop are evaluated to provide detailed rule of thumb to the implementation of FC circuit. Analysis shows the FC also brings favorable switching loss performance and is friendly to employ upon fast switching of wide bandgap devices such as SiC. Finally, a 1.6 kV input, 400 V output, 8 kW scaled-down hybrid NPC-FC-based DAB converter is built to validate the above analysis.