Abstract

Cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converters are an attractive candidate for numerous applications, including static synchronous compensators and next-generation photovoltaic and battery energy storage inverters. Due to its simplicity, scalability, and excellent harmonic performance, phase-shifted pulsewidth modulation (PS-PWM) is one of the preferred modulation strategies for CHB converters. However, the latter advantage might be drastically affected when an unbalanced operation in the H-bridge cells is required, e.g., setting different dc-voltage levels and/or ac-voltage references among cells. This work proposes a predictive optimal variable angle PS-PWM (OVA-PS-PWM) strategy for CHB converters. The proposed OVA-PS-PWM introduces a bilinear dynamic model that describes the impact of the phase-shift angles (PS-angles) over the CHB output voltage harmonics. This model is then employed to formulate an optimal control problem that minimizes the output voltage harmonic distortion. An analytical optimal solution for a PS-angle update rule that applies to CHB converters of any number of cells is derived. As a result, the proposed OVA-PS-PWM updates each PS-angle at every sampling instant, significantly improving the harmonic content of the CHB output voltage even under severely unbalanced operation scenarios. Experimental results are provided with a CHB converter with nine cells to verify the effectiveness of the proposed optimal modulation strategy.