An isolated bidirectional modular multilevel DC/DC converter for power electronic transformer applications

Abstract

With high penetration of renewable energies, power electronic transformers (PETs) will be one of the most important infrastructures in the future power delivery and management system. In this study, an isolated bidirectional modular multilevel DC/DC converter is proposed for PET applications. A modular multilevel structure is adopted as switching valves to sustain medium voltages to achieve modular design and high reliability. Only one high-frequency transformer is used in the proposed converter, which significantly simplifies the circuit and galvanic insulation design. A dual-phase-shift modulation strategy is proposed to regulate the output power and achieve a simple voltage balancing control. A down-scaled (2 kW/20 kHz) prototype is constructed to demonstrate the proposed converter and verify the control strategy. The experimental results comply with the theoretical analysis well, with the highest power efficiency reaching 97.6%.