An Improved Control and Energy Management Strategy of Three-Level NPC Converter Based DC Distribution Network

Abstract

To meet the challenge of large-scale renewable energy penetration and take full advantage of existing AC infrastructure, the bipolar DC distribution system is of interest. In this article, the system structure and characteristics of the bipolar DC distribution network are proposed. The three-level Neural Point Clamped Converter (NPC) is used in the proposed system to construct the bipolar DC system. To optimize the DC system performance, an improved cooperative control and energy management strategy is proposed mainly to mitigate DC voltage fluctuation and balance the positive and negative phase voltage. The improved strategy consists of (1) 2-degree of freedom (2DOF) PID controller in traditional voltage control loop; (2) cooperative controller to take full advantage of storage system; (3) voltage equalization controller to balance two-phase voltages; and (4) the energy management system to dispatch the response job to batteries and supercapacitors. Experiments and simulations are performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.

Keywords

• DC distribution network
• three-level NPC converter
• energy management
• cooperative control
• bipolar system
• voltage equalization
• 2DOF controller