A Novel Single-Phase Triple-Output Active Buck Rectifier Using Nine-Level Packed E-Cell Converter

The development of the bidirectional multilevel converters has provided an opportunity to design multi-output active rectifiers with ability of suppressing THD and power losses, and controlling the reactive power. Accordingly, this paper introduces a novel compact multilevel active buck rectifier using a Packed E-Cell (PEC) converter. The proposed PEC active buck rectifier is able to generate a nine-level voltage waveform on the ac side by using a minimum components count. As a result, the THD of grid current is remarkably reduced while a small size inductor is required as the filter. Since three floating capacitors are employed in the PEC9 dc-links, a Finite Switching Set Model Predictive Control (FSSMPC) combined with PID controller is considered to assure the reliability and the efficiency of the proposed active buck rectifier under stable and unstable conditions. The weighting factors tuning problem in the FSSMPC is also addressed by introducing some simple adaptive laws. Several experiments and simulations have been performed in this research work to validate the feasibility and the reliability of the proposed PEC active buck rectifier in different circumstances.