2012 IEEE 7th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference - ECCE Asia

June 2-5, 2012, Harbin, China

Control and Performance of a Medium-Voltage
Cascade H-bridge STATCOM
Cui Ying, Gao Qiang, Xu Dianguo
School of Electrical Engineering
Harbin Institute of Technology
Harbin, China
cuiyinghit@126.com
Ahstract-STATCOM (Static Synchronous Compensator)
comprising cascade multilevel inverter has broad application
prospects in medium-voltage reactive power compensation feld.
It designs a medium voltage reactive power compensation device
on the basis of principle analyzing of ST A TCOM and carrier
phase-shifed SPWM of multilevel inverter, and verifes its
control algorithm. Simulation and experimental results show the
feasibility of the system with dynamic responses and fne
compensation performance.
Keywords- STATCOM; cascaded H-hridge; carrier phase
shied modulation
I. INTRODUCTION
The problems of harmonic and reactive power brought by
the wide spread of power electronic devices gain much
attention nowadays. Static Synchronous Compensator
(STATCOM) is a bridge-converter equipment with small
capacitor and inductor connected parallel to the grid.
STATCOM can absorb or release reactive power
instantaneously by adjusting the amplitude and phase of
voltage/curent on the AC side[11, Compared to Static Yar
Compensator (SVC), ST A TCOM can compensate haronics
and reduce the size of inductor and capacitor with fast dynamic
response and wide operation range.
High power applications require the voltage and power
rating of switching element as well as high switching
fequency and little harmonic, The existing products' switching
fequency varies inversely to the power rating. Both series and
parallel mode of switching devices have the problems of
voltage/curent sharing and device protection. The cascade
multilevel inverter atacts more people for its great advantages
such as high power capacity, low switching fequency, little
harmonic, fast responding and good electromagnetic
compatibility21,
In this paper, a medium-voltage reactive compensator is
constucted, comprising the cascade H-bridge multilevel
inverter and the Carier Phase-shifed SPWM(CPS-SPWM)
technology, Simulation and experiment results validate the
feasibility and effectiveness of this system.
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IT. DESIGN CONCEPT OF THE I O-KV, 2-MV A
STATCOM
A. Basic Structure and Princile ojSTATCOM
STATCOM usually works as voltage source inverter (YSI),
which is contollable both in amplitude and phase position.
Take the losses of reactor and inverter into consideration, the
equivalent circuit of ST A TCOM is shown in Figure I. \ and
\ stands for grid and STATCOM voltage, \ is the voltage of
reactor ` and equivalent resistance . Because of the existence
of , there is a phase difference 5between \ and \, which
means that this inverter needs to absorb energy fom the grid.
With the contol of 5 and amplitude of \, the current of
ST ATCOM will change a lot, thus the reactive power
exchanged between STATCOM and grid is controlled.
I |
.

turreatleaaiagveltag)
)
turreatlagveltage
a) Single-phase equivalent circuit b) Vector diagram
Figure l. Principle ad equivalent circuit of STAT COM
B. Cascade H-bridge Multi/evelInverter
Multilevel inverter can be divided into diode-clamped,
capacitor-suspended and cascade H-bridge. The basic idea is to
approximate sine-wave by means of multilevel step-wave.
Compared with the former two topology, H-bridge does not
need plenty of diodes and capacitors, and is liable to be
modularized. We don't need to bother about neutal voltage
drif, and all these advantages make it suitable for this project
1
31.
Figure 2 shows the specifc topology of cascade ST A TCOM, a)
star-confgured and b) delta-confgured. Each H-bridge can
output 3 voltage level: +E, -E and O. When both S 1 and S4 are
switched on, output of this bridge is +E; when both S2 and S3
are switched on, output is -E; when S 1 and S3 (S2 and S4) are
switched on, outut is O. If the cascade number of each phase is
N, the total outut level is 2N+ 1. The more levels of each
phase, the more STATCOM ouut proximities sine wave.
978-1-4577-2088-8/11/$26.00 mOl21EEE
c/ cc
uSC uSC
b L
a) Star -confgured b) Delta- confgured
Figure 2. System confguration of STA TCOM
As we design the 10kV STATCOM, the cascade number is
one of the most important parameters. Considering each
module voltage, the 1.7kV lGBTs are available at a reasonable
cost. DC mean voltage of each H-bridge should be IkV at a
rough estimate, so RMS of each block is around 625V. Thus
we can calculate the cascade number N as follow
[41
:

_ 10kV _
9
_
_
.

625V
(I)
Considering the redundancy, the cascade number can be
assigned as N= 11.
C. Modulation Strateg
Modulation stategy of cascade inverter mainly consists of
CPS-SPWM and SVPWM(Space Vector Pulse Width
Modulation), SVPWM is widely used owing to the advantage
of high voltage utilization and lower switching losses. Take
three-level converter as an example, in the synchronous
reference tame, any vector can be compounded by 3 none-zero
neighbouring vectors, in a switch cycle optimizing the time of
3 none-zero and zero vectors to get PWM waveform. However,
if the level number is relatively high, which makes it more
complex in vector-select and time calculation. At present the
research on multilevel SVPWM is limited to 5 levels.
The basic concept of CPS-SPWM is: for N cascade H
bridge, each phase share the same sine modulated wave, the
phase of each triangle carrier is shifed by 1I2N of its period.
Compared every single carier with the modulated sine wave,
N groups of PWM signals are derived to drive N H-bridges.
The output of cascade inverter is multilevel step wave. This
strategy can achieve a higher equivalent switching fequency,
which results in relatively low switching loss and fast dynamic
response.
In this system we choose star-confgured topology. All the
IGBTs are at the same voltage and curent rating as 1.7kV and
300A. The total number of TGBT used for IOkV STATCOM is
132. Take the DC voltage balance into consideration, each H
bridge has 9 capacitors (3 in series, 3 in parallel, each has the
parameter of 5600uF, 450V) on the DC side. CPS-SPWM
wavef with a carier fequency of 1kHz is applied to each
block. Therefore, the AC voltage of each phase becomes 23-
level wavefor with the lowest harmonic sideband centered at
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22kHz. The inductor not only ensures the difference between
ST ATCOM and the grid, but also makes a signifcant
contibution to fltering the switching ripples to get an ahnost
sinusoidal curent wavefor.
L
L

T
1
'
T
Z
N

a) Topology of cascade H-bridge b) waveform of CPS-SPWM

Figure 3. Carrier phase-shifed SPWM on the basis of cascade H-bridge
Ill. CONTROL METHOD
A. Mathematical Models o{STATCOM
According to the main circuit in Figure I, in stationary
coordinate fame, by using Kirchhoffs voltage law, we can get
the relationship between voltage and current. The mathematical
model of star-confgured STATCOM can be represented by
(2)
iu, hand ic are the current of STATCOM. _ ] and _ are
the voltage of the grid. ___ and __ are the voltage of
STATCOM. The model under dq coordinate system can be
acquired
[51
.
d [.] d [ r
i
a
I
I d r
i
a
1
dT
r
i
a
1
I d
T
.
T
. abe-dq .
dt
i
q
_
dt
abe-dq b
_
abe-dq
dt
b
+
dt
b
Ie Ie Ie
d r
i
a
1
[ . ] [ . ] 1 [ ] . Id
O
lq
v
sd
-v
cd
=T -
I
+O
_
+-
abc-dq
dt
i
: -
i
q -
Oi
d
L V dq -Vcq
Where,
T
_
8 smOt sm Ot
-
3 sm Ot+3
l
. ( 2J
J
. ( 2J
J
]
abe-dq V3
( 2J
J
( 2J
J
cos Ot cos Ot
-
3 cos Ot + 3
(3)
The main puose of this system is to control the
S\ ATCOM voltage vedand _
(
by applying PI regulation on dq
aXIS:
(4)
Combined with equation (3)
B. Control Algorithm of This System
Voltage and current closed loop contoller is used in this
system, which is shown in Figure 4. The outut of the DC
voltage regulator is used as the reference of active curent Ipfe;
and the reference of reactive curent lqfej is achieved by PI
regulation of the reactive curent of grid. dq tansforation of
ST A TCOM output curent is used as feedback of curent inner
loop PI contoller, OL is the parameter of connection reactor.
According to equation (4), we can get the outut voltage of
STATCOM U;qrejand Udre Three-phase modulation wave is
achieved by the application of dq-inverse tansformation, then
we can compare modulation wave and carier to get PWM
signals to control the voltage of STAT COM.
si,nal
ic-
L-/dq
Figure 4. Control algorithm of the control system
IV. DESIGN OF THE MAIN CONTROL SYSTEM
A. Selection of the Control Chip
Because of the numerous IGBTs (132 as introduced before)
we used in this system, one DSP can't provide so many PWM
oututs. Although the expansion of hardware circuit can meet
the requirements, it will occupy too much resources, which
sharly restricts the feasibility. With consideration of these
factors, we choose the combination of a DSP and FPGA as the
main contol chip. Thanks to the number of logic gates , I/O
and storage resources of FPGA, and its advantage of fexible
programming, high accuracy and steadiness, it is very suitable
to provide programmable PWM oututs . Complicated control
strategy and data calculation can be achieved by DSP to save
resources, and the mutual cooperation makes it convenience to
contol this multilevel inverter.
B. Selection of the ADC
The contol algorithm intoduced above needs to detect
three-phase voltage and cur ent signals at the same time, but
the main control chip TMS320F28335 only has one ADC with
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2 Sample/Hold, which makes it sample 2 signals only at a time.
This system calls for high rapidity and dynamic response of the
control algorithm. Obviously, the ADC in DSP can't meet
these requirements. Hence we need to choose another ADC
chip MA1308, which can offer eight, four, or two
independent input channels. Independent track-and-hold (TIH)
circuitry provides simultaneous sampling for each channel, and
can convert eight channels in 1.98Is, which makes it easy to
meet the rapidity of this system.
C. Block Diagram of the Control System
Figure 5 shows the block diagram of the control system.
Once detected, the three-phase voltage and curent signals are
send into MA1308. The output data of this ADC is stored in
RAM of the CPLD, and DSP reads them fom CPLD and
process according to the conol algoritm. Afer this it sends
out three-phase modulation wave to FPGA. FPGA compares
the modulation wave with phase-shifed carrier produced by
itself to generate PWM contol signals. These signals are
transferred by optical fber to the drive board in each H-bridge
module to drive IGBTs. Human-computer interface uses
ARM9+TFT and exchanges signals with main control board
via CAN bus. In addition, PLC is needed to conol the electric
contactor.
MUHBH~CCHQUI
|HI|BC
PNJJ
Figure 5. Block diagram of control system
V. SYSTEM MODELING AND SIMULATION
A. System Modeling
The STATCOM model is established based on
Matlab/Simulink. The model parameters are listed as following:
The grid voltage is 2500V, 50Hz. The inductor is 10mH and
the DC capacitor is 5000IlF. The reference DC voltage is
1000V. Each phase of the inverter is constructed by 3 cascade
H-bridges. The curent reference is set to 150A and the voltage
reference 1500V. Figure 6 shows the whole simulation model,
including the main circuit, the voltage curent detective
circuit and the STATCOM contoller.
: D
hrcc-Ihosc SoLrcc BZ B1 3-phase LOAD
|
pulses
SVG Controller

A

'bc_B3
0
labc_B3 labc_B3 C
vdc a pulses
B0 Cas 9
b vdc b
c vdc c
L
Vdc measurement
Figure 6. Simulation model of this system
The contoller comprises voltage modulation model and
PWM carier shif model. N__j __j are the signal of grid
voltage and current respectively. By using the abc-dq
transfonnation, __j can be converted to and _ , which
would be regulated by PI controller respectively. The output of
the DC voltage regulator is the d-axis curent reference ,,,
while the reference curent of q-axis ,, is acquired by the
tansfonnation of ___. The outut voltage \,,_ and \
i
,,
can be calculated by equation (4), and the voltage modulation
wave can be acquired by inverse transformation of \,,_ and
\
i
,,

Figure 7. Generation of three-phase modulation wave

B. Static Responding Characteristics
The carier of the latter H-bridge lags the former one a
constant value, which can be calculated by the carier shifing
module. The 3-phase inverter is contolled by the modulated
voltage signal. The switch on/off is contolled by the signal
derived by the comparison of the modulation signal and carier,
thus, the outut voltage varies corresponding to the modulation
voltage.
The load of the model is pure inductive. Figure 8 illustrates
the voltage and current waveforms of STATCOM, where
current leads voltage by 90 . The capacitive reactive power
output by ST A TCOM neutalizes the grid inductive reactive
power. The compensated curent phase is coincident with the
voltage phase. Figure 9 shows the voltage and curent
wavefonn of grid before and afer compensation, afer
compensate the reactive power of load, voltage and curent are
in phase.
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Per unit
2
1.5 -
0.5-
0-
-0.5 -
-1 -
-1.5
-2 -
value
U
Per unit
H
\
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
Figure 8. Voltage and current waveform of SVG
Figure 9. Voltage ad current waveform of grid before
and afer compensation
C. Dynamic Responding Characteristics
tis
To validate the dynamic responding characteristic of this
system, the simulation is held under the following prerequisites:
The reactive power generated at O.Is and the current of the grid
increases instantaneously at 0.25s, then cut off the load at OAs
which is added at 0.25s, the reactive power decreases back to
zero till 0.6s.
The voltage and curent waveform of the grid are
established in Figure 10, which represents that this system can
track the reactive curent instuction with high dynamic
performance and make the grid voltage and curent phase be
consistent.
Per unit
Figure 10. Voltage and current waveform of grid before and afer
compensation with a sudden change in load
VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A. Start-up Procedure
A special-designed start-up circuit consists of three
magnetic contactors MCl-3 and a pre-charge resistor , as
shown in Figure 11. Because the DC capacitors are separated
fom each other and there are no power supply, the initial
voltage of them are charged through . When the system is
power-on, , MC 1 and MC3 are tured on to charge the DC
capacitors. When all the DC voltage are charged to the desired
value, MC2 is tured on to bypass , then MCI is tured off.
And ST A TCOM will begin to work. It needs to point out that
all the contactors are controlled by PLC.
GdVoltage
Detect;on
Pt'echaroe Inle\- ,;re
contact(
U
r :oltaC\or
MCJ VC2
Precharge
Resistor
R
Figure 11. The system structure of STATCOM
B. Low-Voltage Reacti
v
e Power Compensation Experiments
To verif the contol algorithm in this paper, we did a lot of
experiments in a relatively low voltage. Figure 12 is the
waveform of grid voltage, STATCOM's output voltage and
curents, and the load is inductive. The RMS of grid voltage is
324V, in this fgure the voltage of STATCOM exceeds the grid
voltage. Under this circumstance the curent of STATCOM
leads 90 by the voltage, which means STATCOM works as
capacitor to compensate the lag reactive power of the load.

V
* * *
t t v * t t
R P P
g P
w m - V v q
o e
Figure 12. Waveform of grid voltage, STATCOM output voltage and currents
C. Dynamic Response Experiment Results
We also did a lot experiments to validate the dynamic
response of rapid load change. Figure 13 is the curent
waveform of grid, load and STATCOM. It can be seen that if
the load is pure reactive, the current of ST A TCOM and load
are counteracted. Once the load is cut off, the cur ent of
ST A TCOM falls to zero at about the same time. The response
time is less than Sms and doesn't cause any impact to the grid.
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Figure 14 is the wavef of these curents when there is
an abrupt inductive load of the grid. As the curent of the
inductive load can't change instantly, the curent of
ST ATCOM varies consonant with load immediately. Figure 13
and Figure 14 show that this system can meet the dynamic
response requirements .
Grid Current
_
_ Load Current
~
_ /TCOM Current
Jv. P vI20 0mv A Ch1 J

Figure 13. Current waveform of grid, load and STATCOM with

a sudden cut-off in load
Figure 14. Current waveform of grid, load and STATCOM with
abrupt inductive load
VIT. CONCLUSION
Cascade H-bridge multilevel inverter has the advantages of
simple structure and little haronic content. The application of
CPS-SPWM can improve equivalent fequency and reduce
output haronic, which can solve the problems in high-power
converters. Simulation and experiment results verif the
compensation fnction and dynamic response of STATCOM
based on the contol strategy introduced in this paper, which
indicates a fme prospect of the device in high-power
applications.
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[4] K. Anuradha. B. P. Muni, A. D. RajKumar.Novel Control Strategy for
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