Optimal Predictive Control of Three-Phase NPC Multilevel Converter for Power Quality Applications

This paper presents the optimal control of the ac currents, the dc voltage regulation, and the dc capacitor voltage balancing in a three-level three-phase neutral point clamped multilevel converter for use in power quality applications as an active power filter. The ac output currents and the dc capacitor voltages are sampled and predicted for the next sampling time using linearized models and considering all the 27 output voltage vectors. A suitable quadratic weighed cost function is used to choose the voltage vector that minimizes the ac current tracking errors, the dc voltage steady-state error, and the input dc capacitor voltage unbalancing. The obtained experimental results show that the output ac currents track their references showing small ripple, a total harmonic distortion (THD) of less than 1%, harmonic contents that are 46 dB below the fundamental, and almost no steady-state error (0.3%). The capacitor voltages are balanced within 0.05%, and the balancing is assured even when redundant vectors are not chosen. Near-perfect capacitor dc voltage balancing is obtained while reducing current harmonic distortion. Some experimental evidence of robustness concerning a parameter variation was also found, with the optimum controller withstanding parameter deviations from $+$100% to $-$50%. Compared to a robust sliding mode controller, the optimal controller can reduce the THD of the ac currents or reduce the switching frequency at the same THD, being a suitable controller for power quality in medium-voltage applications.