Sharif Digital Repository

The limited value of the insolated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) blocking voltage is an important issue for applying these devices to the high-voltage power converters. An effective solution is to use a series configuration of these devices in order to achieve higher voltage ratings in addition to save the interesting features such as fast rising time. To reach this goal, acceptable equal voltage sharing for the IGBTs are provided by the series stacking schemes in the normal operation.However, a considerable difference in their voltage level will be occurred in the short-circuit condition. Although the IGBT can withstand the short-circuit current in a defined time, the occurred high... 

Cascaded H-bridge converter has been utilized recently in different high-power applications due to its modular and simple structure. In order to have a balanced operation after a fault occurrence in this converter, it is necessary to detect the switch fault and its location. In this paper, a fast power-switch fault detection method is presented to identify a fault and its location. Only one voltage measurement per phase is required by this method, and the fault detection is faster compared to the existing methods. Moreover, it is suitable for implementation on an FPGA device due to the use of simple math, relational, and state machine blocks. The proposed method is verified by computer... 

This paper presents a new unified power-quality conditioning system (MC-UPQC), capable of simultaneous compensation for voltage and current in multibus/multifeeder systems. In this configuration, one shunt voltage-source converter (shunt VSC) and two or more series VSCs exist. The system can be applied to adjacent feeders to compensate for supply-voltage and load current imperfections on the main feeder and full compensation of supply-voltage imperfections on the other feeders. In the proposed configuration, all converters are connected back to back on the dc side and share a common dc-link capacitor. Therefore, power can be transferred from one feeder to adjacent feeders to compensate for... 

Medium power distributed energy resources (DERs) are commonly connected to medium voltage distribution systems via voltage source converters (VSCs). Several guidelines and standards have been developed to establish the needed criteria and requirements for DERs interconnections. In this respect, it is preferred to reinforce the VSC fault ride through (FRT) capability, which considerably minimizes the DG outage period and reconnection time and results in a resilient system against short circuits. Considering the significant number of asymmetrical faults in distribution systems, the VSC response in such conditions must be investigated, and consequently, its FRT capability must be reinforced. In... 

Short-circuit fault (SCF) detection is mandatory in a high voltage DC power supply (HVPS) to prevent fatal damage. The majority of converters employ a single sensor to detect the SCF. This attribute increases the interference vulnerability of the fault detection (FD) system in the presence of noise. Therefore, miss detections and false alarms are possible to occur. Miss detections and false alarms are harmful catastrophes in most applications. A commonly used method to suppress the noise impacts is using a low-bandwidth low-pass filter. However, the use of the low-bandwidth low-pass filter reduces the speed of FD due to the filter delay. This paper proposes a fast FD algorithm based on... 

High voltage power supplies (HVPS) are widely used to supply vacuum tubes. Regarding to their high efficiency, resonant converters are a choice of HVPS structure. In this application, HVPS is faced with wide variation of the load power. On the other hand, output voltage regulation over wide load range is essential. However, there are several problems dealing with resonant converters such as output voltage regulation and low-efficient performance in a light load. In this paper, a control scheme for a series-parallel resonant converter is presented. This scheme regulates the output voltage of the converter over load variation range. A variable inductor placed as the series inductor in the... 

Due to several advantages, three-phase Dual Active Bridge (DAB) converter is widely used in numerous applications nowadays. On the other hand, this converter is very vulnerable to Transistor Open-Circuit Fault (TOCF). Therefore, a fault-tolerant (FT) scheme has been proposed in this paper to solve the problem. First, normal and faulty conditions are investigated, and according to the results, a fault-diagnosis (FD) approach is introduced. Using the outcomes of FD unit, a new post-fault strategy is proposed for the converter. The FD method is based on the DC component of transformer phase currents, and the basis of FT technique is shedding the faulty phase. Some benefits of the proposed... 

The LLC resonant converter, as a promising solution for battery charger applications, has the ability to adjust its output voltage during Constant Current and Constant Voltage modes in the charging profile. However, its operation mode changes as switching frequency changes. Therefore, for efficiency-oriented optimizations in battery charger applications, the one-pointed efficiency is not an appropriate objective. To this end, in this paper, a multi-pointed averaged efficiency is considered for optimization along with the transformer volume. Another factor of a proper design for a wide output range LLC is the converter peak voltage gain that is calculated based on an accurate method. The... 

This paper proposes an enhanced hybrid modular multilevel converter (MMC), which utilizes a combination of half-bridge submodules (HBSM) and at least one full-bridge submodule (FBSM). In the proposed structure, FBSMs work with half of the HBSMs nominal voltage in each arm. Due to the presence of FBSMs, HBSMs switching frequency drops significantly, which reduces the converter power loss compared to half-bridge based MMCs. Furthermore, because of redundant FBSMs, (2N + 1)-modulation can be employed to generate the output voltage without increasing the circulating current, thus, the converter performance is improved notably. Besides, with the redundant FBSMs, the converter can continue its... 

Multi-port converters (MPC), used in multi-input/multi-output power electronic systems have low cost, low weight and low mass integrated control system. Besides these converters offer bidirectional and isolated ports, which are inevitable in some applications. Three-Port Half Bridge Converters (TPHBC) are the ones which have the lowest component count. But these converters suffer from a low Zero Voltage Switching (ZVS) range that is lost in medium to low load powers. Low ZVS range cause low efficiency, especially in low output powers. In this paper a modified Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique is introduced to increase the ZVS range of main switches which results higher efficiency and... 

This article explores the impacts of non-exponentially distributed failures on reliability of microgrids. Failure rate of some components such as power electronic converters is not constant, while they play a major role in microgrids. Consequently, their failure characteristics will affect the microgrid reliability. Hence, the conventional reliability evaluation approaches based on mean time to failure may introduce inaccurate inputs for decision making in planning and operation of microgrids. In this article, different approaches are employed for evaluating the reliability of microgrids with non-constant failure rates. The obtained results indicate that the system reliability remarkably... 

In this article, a new soft switching isolated push-pull dc-dc converter using a three-winding transformer is proposed. The proposed hybrid resonant and pulse width modulated converter employs a conventional push-pull structure in the primary side, a voltage doubler in the secondary side, and a bidirectional switch besides the transformer, altogether help offering a high efficiency over a wide range of input and output voltage signals with an unsophisticated fixed-frequency control mechanism. The primary-side switches are commutated under zero voltage switching with low switching current and the secondary-side diodes are commutated under zero current switching. In this article, we first... 

This paper evaluates the reliability impact of UPFC application in power system. The paper proposes a new reliability model for the UPFC which is capable of considering different operating states of UPFC. The model is then applied to a test system to study the reliability impacts of UPFC. The impacts of operating points of different states of the model on the system reliability are analyzed. The role of model parameters in reliability impacts of UPFC is analyzed through the sensitivity analysis. A comparative study is finally conducted to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model compare to that of existing UPFC reliability models. The abilities and deficiencies of the proposed... 

Usually the digital phase shifters are used to steer the beam of a phased array antenna, and the accuracy of beam steering and other properties of the radiation pattern is dependent on the number of bits of the phase shifter and its resolution. In this paper the results of simulations, accomplished using a number of phase feeding methods in order to reduce the phase quantization error effects are presented and three new methods are introduced and compared with the previous works. Copyright 2006 IEICE  

The method for modeling switching converters plays a key role in real-time simulators. Associate discrete circuit (ADC) modeling technique is a commonly used method for modeling the switching converter. However, the optimal selection of the ADC-based switch model parameters has great importance in the accuracy of the real-time simulator. In this paper, the design of a real-time simulator for a switching power converter has been done, in which a novel method for detecting optimum values of the switch model parameters has been expressed. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to find these optimum values using state-space analysis of the modeled circuit in the z-domain. The... 

Capacitors are one of the most critical components in power electronic converters, yet they are notoriously susceptible to failure. Avoiding unforeseen outages caused by capacitor failures is one of the most effective approaches to increase system availability. Therefore, a variety of methods have been proposed to monitor a capacitor health condition based on different degradation indicators. This paper proposes a new approach based on the accurate measurement of an electrolytic capacitor dissipation factor to detect its end-of-life. Since the dissipation factor is affected by both the capacitor resistance and capacitance simultaneously, it can provide more information about the health... 

DC-DC quasi-resonant converters (QRC) have the advantage of reducing switching losses and electromagnetic interference (EMI) which are the main disadvantages of high frequency power converters. The control and stabilization of these converters have always been a challenge. Traditionally, the dynamical model of the QRC is obtained using state space averaging followed by linearization about an operating point. The major flaw of this method is that state variables have large variations; thus, the linearized averaged model is not valid. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain a more precise model for the aim of stability analysis and controller design. Due to semiconductors switching, QRCs are... 

This paper offers a new EF-class converter for dynamic wireless power transfer application. The proposed high-frequency converter employs a floating-frequency switching algorithm to control the converter in a continuous frequency range, eliminate the requirement to any additional operational data from the secondary (receiver) side, accelerate the load impedance match while moving, maximize the transferred power rate, reduce charging interval and compensate power transfer tolerances. Moreover, an optimized super elliptical shape coil is designed to cope with lateral misalignment, enhance coil coupling, and increase efficiency. In the proposed converter, (i) soft switching is implemented to... 

The increasing use of power electronic equipment and the importance of their continuous and correct operation have attracted remarkable attention to the condition monitoring of power electronic converters. Since capacitors are the leading cause of power electronic converters failure, this paper attempts to attain a solution to monitor the condition of the DC-link capacitor in a three-phase back-to-back converter using the stimulated measurable transients. The proposed method works based on the temporary change of switching logic and the measurement of the DC-link voltage and converter input phase current transients. By processing the measured signals, the capacitance of the capacitor is... 

The deployment of flexible ac transmission system (FACTS) devices, despite miscellaneous benefits and applications, has been restricted mainly due to their large investment costs. Accordingly, the notion of distributed FACTS (D-FACTS) was recently proposed. Distributed static series compensators (DSSCs), as a new member of D-FACTS, are directly clamped to conductors of transmission lines. The possibility of controlling the compensation rate of DSSCs from the control center affords the active control of network power flow. This paper presents a comprehensive reliability model for the DSSC. The model is then reduced and a state-space representation is extracted for a transmission line with a...