Reduction of DC-link Capacitor in Case of Cascade Multilevel Converters by means of Reactive Power Control

A method to selectively control the amount of dc link voltage ripple by processing desired reactive power by a DC/DC converter in isolated AC/DC or AC/DC/AC system is proposed. The concept can reduce the dc link capacitors used for balancing the input and output power and thereby limiting the voltage ripple. It allows the use of smaller dc link capacitor and hence a longer lifetime and at the same time high power density and low cost can be achieved. The isolated DC/DC converter is controlled to process the desired reactive power in addition to the active power. The control system to achieve this selective degree of compensation is proposed. Simulation results are also presented to support the idea