Modulated Model Predictive Control for Multilevel Cascaded H-Bridge Converter-Based Static Synchronous Compensator

The model predictive control (MPC) methods have been widely applied due to the fast dynamic performance and multiple control targets. However, they show certain limits when applied to the multilevel converters, such as unfixed switching frequency, large computation burden, and complex weighting factors selection. This article proposes a novel modulated MPC (M
²
PC) method for cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converter-based static synchronous compensator (STATCOM). Instead of multitarget integration and weighting factor design, the proposed method disintegrates the voltage balancing control process from the cost function. The evaluated control sets for output current control is decided by the search step and the search range in each period. By proper design and selection of the adaptive search step for the output voltage references under
α–β
coordinate, the search range can be reduced, which greatly reduces the number of evaluated control sets in each control period. Therefore, the dynamic of output characteristics and the low computation burden of the MPC method are guaranteed simultaneously. In addition, with the simple and independent integration of the capacitor voltage balancing control, the proposed method can be easily applied in the CHB converter-based STATCOM application. Furthermore, this article provides a delay compensation for the prediction process, and it provides a fixed switching frequency for each H-bridge cell. Simulation and experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed M
²
PC method.