Development of an SDBC-MMCC-Based DSTATCOM for real-time single-phase load compensation in three-phase power distribution systems

Abstract

This paper proposes a newly developed single-delta bridge-cell, modular multilevel cascade converter (SDBC-MMCC)-based distribution-level static synchronous compensator (DSTATCOM) for single-phase load compensation in three-phase, three-wire electric power distribution systems. Each main circuit arm of the DSTATCOM uses a modular multilevel cascade converter based on full-H-bridge (FHB) cells. The three main DSTATCOM arms are delta-connected to allow phase-independent operations for phase balancing and unity power factor correction of the single-phase load in three-phase, three-wire electric power distribution systems. By using the symmetrical components method, a feedforward compensation algorithm was employed for the DSTATCOM. A simulation of the DSTATCOM was performed for functioning verification. Finally, a hardware test system was built by using a multi-DSP-based control system. The test results verified the effectiveness of the proposed SDBC-MMCC-based DSTATCOM in single-phase load compensation.