Enhanced Model Predictive Nearest Level Control for 5-Level Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converter, Hardware Implementation and Comparison

Model predictive control (MPC) as a nonlinear control method, is being studied for a wide variety of power electronics applications targeting various power ranges. The fast dynamic response, robustness under different load conditions, multi-objective control, and simplicity of implementation are the main features of MPC. However, the implementation of finite control set MPC (FCS-MPC) or direct MPC in its basic form for multilevel converters (MLCs) demonstrates the inability to generate the staircase multilevel output voltage waveform in a voltage sourced inverter (VSI) application. Adding a reference evaluation block to the basic FCS-MPC method can significantly improve its multilevel voltage generation capability. In this paper, an enhanced model predictive nearest level control (EMP-NLC) is proposed and implemented on a 5-Level flying capacitor multilevel converter (FCMC). The proposed method is simulated under different load conditions, while a comparison against existing MPC techniques is also presented. Experimental results verified the efficacy of the proposed controller.