DC Link Capacitor Ripple Constraints Limit the Benefits of Utility-Owned Four-Wire Power Converters

Abstract

Utilities are increasingly interested in power converters to increase the headroom of their assets by actively controlling power flows on their network. In this work we demonstrate that thermal limits of dc link capacitors can result in substantially diminished benefits of these converters under unbalanced operation, due to constraints on neutral current and double-line frequency power ripple. Considering nine voltage source converter topologies with varying ripple capabilities, the upper bound (in terms of additional headroom released) increases by more than 80% compared to a no-ripple case for the application of phase current unbalance mitigation.