Active Thermal Control for Hybrid Modular Multilevel Converter Under Overmodulation Operation

The thermal management plays an important role in improving the reliability and lifetime of high power converters, especially for the high voltage direct current (HVdc) transmission system. In the voltage source converter based HVdc systems (VSC-HVdc), the hybrid modular multilevel converters (MMCs) are taken as the excellent candidates due to their dc short-circuit fault ride-through ability and less submodule (SM) devices. Furthermore, the voltage modulation index of hybrid MMCs can be promoted to achieve higher power rating and efficiency. However, in this article, it is revealed that thermal stress distribution inside the SMs becomes more unbalanced under a high voltage modulation index, which would lead to serious thermal fatigue. To overcome this problem, the active bypass with thyristor for half-bridge submodules (HBSMs) and symmetrical modulation for full-bridge submodules (FBSMs) based active thermal control strategies are employed. With the presented thermal control strategies, the junction temperature of the most stressed devices in both HBSMs and FBSMs is reduced enormously. Besides, the thermal control strategy does not bring negative influence on the steady-state output performance of hybrid MMC. Finally, the theoretical analysis and effectiveness of the proposed control methods are verified based on a laboratorial MMC prototype.