International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 1 Issue 9, November- 2012

Three Phase Parallel Multilevel Inverter Fed Induction Motor

Using PD Modulation Scheme

N V Bharadwaj B V Hemanth Kumar V Padmaja

Assoc. Professor Assoc. Professor Asst.Professor
Member ISTE

Abstract power and medium voltage situations such as

laminators, mills, conveyors, pumps, fans, blowers,
This Paper presents the Phase Disposition Scheme, compressors, and so on. As a cost effective solution,
which is topology independent. This scheme is used in multilevel converter not only achieves high power
Multilevel Inverters, interleaved parallel combination. ratings, but also enables the use of low power
Analysis on the other scheme which is Phase application in renewable energy sources such as
Opposition Disposition has also been performed. The photovoltaic, wind, and fuel cells which can be easily
best strategies related to the paralleling of inverters interfaced to a multilevel converter system for a high
are evaluated, particularly those associated to current power application.
balancing between commutation cells of the same
phase. The most common initial application of multilevel
converters has been in traction, both in locomotives
Pulse width modulation (PWM) strategies and methods and track-side static converters [4]. More recent
for multilevel converters are usually developed for applications have been for power system converters for
series converters. In this paper it is shown that they VAR compensation and stability enhancement [5],
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may be applied to parallel converters using active filtering [6], high-voltage motor drive [3], high-
interleaving techniques, given that these converters voltage dc transmission [7], and most recently for
also have multilevel characteristics. PWM methods medium voltage induction motor variable speed drives
based on carriers’ disposition and on zero sequence [8]. Many multilevel converter applications focus on
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injection are studied for parallel multilevel inverters. industrial medium-voltage motor drives [3, 9], utility
Analysis shows that the best method in terms of load interface for renewable energy systems [10], flexible
current ripple is the phase disposition method. The AC transmission system (FACTS) [11], and traction
current balancing between commutation cells of the drive systems [12]. The inverters in such application
same phase is comparatively superior with this areas as stated above should be able to handle high
method. Another objective on which work was done voltage and large power. For this reason, two-level
was to analyze these problems and to propose a high-voltage and large-power inverters have been
solution to cancel current imbalance when using PD designed with series connection of switching power
strategy. devices such as gate-turn-off thyristors (GTOs),
integrated gate commutated transistors (IGCTs), and
In addition to the above scheme POD (Phase integrated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), because the
Opposition Disposition) strategy has also been series connection allows reaching much higher
simulated which has shown comparatively same results voltages. However, the series connection of switching
as that of the PD strategy. The load was chosen to be a power devices has big problems [13], namely, non
three phase induction motor drive and its parameters equal distribution of applied device voltage across
such as Stator Current, Speed and Electromagnetic series-connected devices that may make the applied
Torque have been analysed as such. voltage of individual devices much higher than
blocking voltage of the devices during transient and
steady-state switching operation of devices.
I Introduction The elementary concept of a multilevel
Power electronic converters, especially dc/ac converter to achieve higher power is to use a series of
PWM inverters have been extending their range of use power semiconductor switches with several lower
in industry because they provide reduced energy voltage dc sources to perform the power conversion by
consumption, better system efficiency, improved synthesizing a staircase voltage waveform. Capacitors,
quality of product, good maintenance, and so on. batteries, and renewable energy voltage sources can be
For a medium voltage grid, it is troublesome to connect used as the multiple dc voltage sources. The
only one power semiconductor switches directly commutation of the power switches aggregate these
[1,2,3]. As a result, a multilevel power converter multiple dc sources in order to achieve high voltage at
structure has been introduced as an alternative in high the output; however, the rated voltage of the power

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 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 1 Issue 9, November- 2012

semiconductor switches depends only upon the rating using regular inductors to connect them is not
of the dc voltage sources to which they are connected. recommended due to the increase of the current ripple
Multilevel converters do have some disadvantages. in each cell. To solve this problem, coupled inductors
One particular disadvantage is the greater number of may be used since currents in all cells are magnetically
power semiconductor switches needed. Although lower coupled, reducing their amplitude and increasing their
voltage rated switches can be utilized in a multilevel frequency.
converter, each switch requires a related gate drive
circuit. This may cause the overall system to be more
expensive and complex. Abundant modulation
techniques and control paradigms have been developed
for multilevel converters such as sinusoidal pulse width
modulation (SPWM), selective harmonic elimination
(SHE-PWM), space vector modulation (SVM), and
others. In this thesis sinusoidal pulse width modulation
(SPWM) is used.

II Proposed Concept:
Multilevel conversion is not a priori limited to
voltage source inverter (VSI), but three-phase drives
are a huge market, and a lot of effort has been made to
optimize the operation of multilevel three-phase VSI.
In particular, modulation techniques have been Figure1. Three-phase parallel multilevel inverter
thoroughly investigated, resulting to different options
in using the zero sequence component of the reference III Three-Phase Application Scheme:
as a degree of freedom. When it comes to comparing The system to be analyzed is shown in Fig. 1.
the performance of these different strategies, the It is composed of two three-phase inverters connected
approach presented is efficient. in parallel. Each phase (U, V, W) is composed of two
As a first step, it is shown that different commutation cells (a and b) which are connected in
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dispositions of the carriers are possible for multilevel parallel through coupled or uncoupled inductors. These
converters. Then, it can be seen that, unlike other inductors (La and Lb) have self-inductance L and
dispositions, phase disposition (PD) optimizes the line- mutual inductance Mab. The load was chosen to be a
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to-line voltage because it makes carrier frequency three phase induction motor, which represent a
harmonics as a common mode voltage that cancels out machine. The aim of this paper is to present the way to
in the line-to-line voltage. For this reason, PD adapt strategies developed for parallel multilevel
modulation is preferred to other dispositions. converters.
The second benefit is that this carrier-based
approach describes, within the same frame, IV Modulation Principle:
conventional carrier-based strategies, space-vector There are three reference signals shifted by
modulation, and discontinuous modulations (only the 120◦. They are imposed in an N-level system
variable frequency strategies, like hysteresis and composed of N − 1 carriers. Each reference signal may
sliding mode control, recalculated strategies, or direct have a sinusoidal waveform with or without a zero
torque control, are left aside). A point of interest is that sequence signal. The modulation system generates
the equation of the common mode component three ideal waveforms obtained from comparisons for
producing the same switching pattern as the multilevel each of the three phases. Each output phase voltage has
centered space vector (CSV) strategy is given. N levels. These ideal waveforms are sent to a second
The third benefit is that this approach is block which turns on and off the proper switches
topology independent, which was not always the case according to the required level.
in previous literature. For example, it has been shown The advantage of this type of approach is to
in how PD modulation can be applied to flying comprise a first stage which is completely independent
capacitor converters. Recently, the interest for parallel of the topology, and as a consequence, it can be studied
connection of commutation cell has grown. Depending and optimized separately. The second part allows us to
on the application, increasing power, using standard adapt the generic modulator to the actual topology. For
modules, increasing the efficiency, or using smaller the first part of the modulator, various strategies are
magnetic components can be the motivation, but due to considered: phase opposite disposition (POD), or PD
the development of multilevel converters, interleaved strategies. Consequently, a brief recall of the POD and
switching is generally chosen or, at least, considered. the PD will be presented in order to emphasize the
Interleaving the switching signals of parallel cells balancing behavior of two currents in parallel
reduces the output current ripple and increases the commutation cells. For this, we will focus on a
dynamic performance of the converter. However, the significant variable related to the paralleling of
parallelization of a high number of commutation cells

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 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 1 Issue 9, November- 2012

commutation cells: the current difference in each signals since the commutation for each cell is assigned
phase. seperately.

V Modulation System:
i. POD Modulation Scheme: For an N-level system, it
comprises N − 1 vertically disposed carriers regularly
shifted by 180◦ at N times the switching frequency (Fs)
of the power switches. Thus, if the reference signal is
at the top part (upper striped area), the output level is
one. If it is inside the middle window (gray area), the
output level is zero, while if it is at the bottom part
(bottom striped area), the output level is−1. The
reference signal may be sampled at the carriers’
frequency, i.e., at 2*Fs for a three-level converter.

Figure 4. Three phase differential current

VII Simulation Results:

The simulation block in figure.1 shows the circuit with
three phase induction motor load. The input voltage to
the inverter cells is taken as 300V d.c. The mutual
inductance values and the resistance values are taken
accordingly. The corresponding output waveforms are
as shown below.
Figure 2. POD reference waveform

ii. PD Modulation Scheme: PD modulation in an N-

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level system consists of N − 1 vertically disposed
carriers in phase. As in the POD modulation, if
reference signal is at the top part (upper striped area),
the output level is one, and if it is inside the middle
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window (gray area), the output level is zero. If it is at

the bottom part (bottom striped area), the output level
is −1. The carrier frequency is also equal to N − 1
times the switching frequency, and in a three-level
system, sampling occurs at 2*Fs.

Figure 5. Stator current, rotor speed and E.M torque

Figure 3. PD reference waveform

VI Current Difference Control:

With the intention to guarantee zero average current
difference in each phase, it is essential to measure each Figure 6. Three phase voltage waveforms of inverter
of the two currents of each phase. In a classical
multilevel modulation strategy, each cell is controlled
by one modulator. The control is performed by adding VIII Conclusion:
a differential signal over both modulation signals. In The work developed in this paper has shown
our case, there is no separation of both modulation that it is possible to obtain the best characteristics of
both strategies by using the PD strategy coupled to a
method which compensates the transitions of the

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 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 1 Issue 9, November- 2012

differential mode currents. It has been presented an of spectral components of multilevel carrier based
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adding a square waveform at the switching frequency, no. 4, pp. 847–857, Aug. 2002.
which removes the dc component of the differential [14] A. M. Hava, R. J. Kerkman, and T. A. Lipo, “A
mode current. This implies the need of measurement of high-performance generalized discontinuous PWM
the differential current and its comparison with a algorithm,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 34, no. 5, pp.
reference of zero current. PD modulation scheme has 1059–1071, Sep./Oct. 1998.
been successfully applied to an Induction Motor Drive.

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