High-speed simulation of modular multilevel converters for optimization based design

Abstract

Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) are being widely considered for shipboard applications. Designing such converters through multi-objective optimization is of interest, because such an approach allows the trade-off between competing objectives (for example, mass and loss) to be explicitly and quantitatively identified. However, doing so can require 104–106 time domain simulations in order to rigorously explore the design space. In this work, a computationally efficient simulation is developed to estimate the MMC waveforms. While the existing literature sets forth average-value models for transient studies of MMCs, fast waveform-level models are still needed. This work presents a suitable approach which is validated against a detailed simulation model.