Partial Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop Test for In-Situ Dynamic and Steady-State Validation of a Single Submodule in a Megawatt-Scale MMC

Modular multilevel converter (MMC) has been highlighted as a scalable power converter for high-power applications. As a unit power block, submodule (SM) is a key component to achieve the scalability and reliability of the MMC. Therefore, it is important to test an SM under various operating conditions during the development stage before the final full assembly. To reduce the development cost and time, various methods have been presented to test a single SM without a full MMC assembly. Recently, owing to the advancement of processing power, real time simulators are beginning to be incorporated to test an MMC controller as a controller-hardware-in-the-loop-simulation. This article proposes the realization of a versatile powering test scheme for a single SM combining a real-time simulator, referred to as partial power-hardware-in-the-loop (partial PHIL) test. For demonstration, an industria…