FPGA-Based Real-Time Simulation of Dual-Port Submodule MMC–HVDC System

• Main Authors: Jin, Z. (Author), Wang, S. (Author), Wu, Y. (Author), Zhang, B. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2022
• Subjects: Electromagnetic transient model; electromagnetic transient modeling; Field programmable gate arrays (FPGA); Field programmables; Field-programmable gate array; field-programmable gate array (FPGA); HVDC power transmission; MATLAB; Modular multilevel converter; modular multilevel converter (MMC); Modulars; Multilevel converter; Power converters; Prestored parameter; prestored parameters; Programmable gate array; real-time simulation; Realtime simulation (RTS); Submodules; Transients
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Aiming at the problems of the high switch numbers, complex working mechanisms, and complicated real-time simulation of modular multilevel converters (MMCs) composed of dual-port submodules, in this study, we designed a unified equivalent model of the multiple submodule network by analyzing the combination of parallel submodules in the bridge arm. The proposed model decouples the submodules that do not affect each other in the subnetwork calculation process, thereby reducing the number of prestored parameters in the subnetwork simulation. In the Xilinx Virtex-7 FPGA VC709 (Xilinx Corporation, San Jose, CA, USA) development board, we replaced the inline computation combined with the prestorage of parameters with the proposed equivalent model to optimize the execution unit structure and redesigned the FPGA-Based Real-Time Digital Solver (FRTDS). Taking the P-FBSM-based MMC–HVDC system as the simulation object, we performed a real-time simulation with a step size of 10 µs, which verified the effectiveness of the proposed model and the improvement in the hardware. We compared the results with the offline MATLAB/Simulink simulation results to verify the accuracy of the simulation. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.