Reliability and Cost-Oriented Analysis, Comparison and Selection of Multi-Level MVdc Converters

DC technology has gained considerable interest in the medium voltage applications due to the benefits over the AC counterpart. However, to utilize the full capacity of this development, the selection of a suitable power electronic converter topology is a key aspect. From the pool of voltage source converters (VSC's), it is unclear which topology is suitable for multi-megawatt applications at medium voltage dc (MVdc) levels. To address this, the paper proposes a selection guideline based on reliability and optimum redundancy levels of VSCs for MVdc applications. This will be combined with other functional factors such as operational efficiency and return-on-investment. Three candidate multi-level topologies namely three-level neutral point clamped converter (3L-NPC), modular multi-level converter (MMC) and cascaded 3L-NPC (which is being used for the first MVdc link in the U.K.) have been evaluated over two-level-VSC from +/- 10 kV to +/- 50 kV. Results show that with the increase of MVdc voltage level MMC shows better performance whereas at low MVdc voltage levels 3L-NPC is the prominent topology.