Alternate Arm Converter Operation

of the Modular Multilevel Converter

M.M.C. Merlin, P.D. Judge, T.C. Green, P.D. Mitcheson

F. Moreno, K. Dyke

Imperial College London

London, UK
michael.merlin@imperial.ac.uk

Alstom Grid
Stafford, UK
francisco.moreno@alstom.com

AbstractA new operating mode of the Modular Multilevel

Converter (MMC) using modified arm current waveforms
inspired from the working principle of the Alternate Arm
Converter (AAC) is presented in this paper. A reduction in the
cell voltage deviation is observed at power factors close to unity
at the cost of an increase in power losses, especially when
reactive power is required. This gain in voltage margin is then
used in further optimizations of the MMC performance, mainly
focusing on either increasing the number of redundant cells or
improving the overall power efficiency of the converter.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) [1], illustrated in

Fig. 1, was the first modular Voltage Source Converter (VSC)
to provide both low switching losses and low AC current
distortion; these features contribute to the higher power
efficiency and the significant reduction in the size of the AC
filters of recent VSC power stations [2]. A number of MMC
converter stations are now in operation and more are planned
in the next couple of years with power ratings ever increasing.
Over the last few years, a new family of hybrid topologies [36], such as the Alternate Arm Converter [4,5] (AAC), drawn
in Fig. 2, have emerged. These topologies essentially
combine both the 2-level VSC and the MMC together in
order to improve on some characteristics such as smaller
overall volume, better power efficiency and, in some
topologies, DC-side fault blocking capability. It has also been
shown [7] that the AAC has a better temperature distribution
between the IGBT modules of a cell in comparison to the
MMC. Extensive studies have also presented different
modelling approaches of the electical dynamics of these
multilevel converters and it has been shown that reduced
dynamic models have an acceptable level of accuracy while
offering an appreciable boost in computing speed [8-11]. The
AAC has a relatively similar electrical topology to the MMC
with the main difference being the presence of director
switches, i.e. series-IGBTs, in its arms in series with the stack
of cells. The switching state of these director switches
determines which arms are both generating the converter
voltage waveform and carrying the AC current to the
respective DC terminal. This approach has proven [4,5] to be

This study has been financed by the EPSRC under the UK Power
Electronics Centre Converter Theme grant (EP/K035096/1)

978-1-4799-5776-7/14/$31.00 (c)2014 IEEE

both power and volume effective, resulting in (i) the number

of cells be significantly reduced, e.g. up to half the number of
cells compared to the MMC, (ii) the average cell voltage
deviation is lower allowing smaller capacitors in the cells and
(iii) the use of full H-bridge cells instead of half-bridge cells,
thus the AAC is able to block DC-side faults without
compromising its overall power efficiency. In the case of the
MMC, it was observed rapidly after the topology was
proposed that unplanned circulating currents (mainly second
harmonics) were running between the legs [12]. This issue
was later solved by implementing additional feedback loops
in charge of monitoring the arm currents [13]. Besides, it has
also been observed that this circulating current can be used to
reduce the cell voltage deviation of the cell capacitors [12] or
by adding a 2nd harmonic filter at the midpoint of the arm
inductors [14].
This paper presents an original arm current waveform for the
in the MMC, inspired by the working mechanism of the
AAC. This study focuses on the effects of changing the arm
current waveforms which only implies an update of the
control system (software) but not the converter itself
(hardware) which thus stays the same. This implies that (i)
both the AC and DC quantities (e.g. power, voltage and
current magnitudes) remain unchanged, (ii) the cells are still
of the half-bridge type and (iii) the passive components (e.g.
cell capacitors and arm inductors) keep the same values.
Furthermore only the top level part of the controller is
affected (e.g. current control) but the low-level control stays
the same thus this does not require changes in either the
wiring or the communication with the cells. Finally the
benefits of this update both in terms of cell capacitor voltage
deviation and power efficiency will be explored and margins
for further optimizations are discussed. Finally, modular
VSC topologies such as the MMC and the AAC can also be
connected in front-to-front arrangements (meaning that the
AC sides are facing each others) in order to form a DC/DC
converter such as in [15]. Therefore the current modulation
concept introduced in this paper can potentially also be used
in such DC/DC topologies with equivalent pros and cons as
discussed in this paper.

The AAC distributes its AC currents in a different pattern

as only one arm in each leg carries the full AC current while
the other has its director switch opened, blocking any current
from flowing through the arm. Using the variables
A,B,C {0,1} which represent whether the AC current of a
particular leg is passing either through the top or bottom arm,
the set of equations describing the arm currents in AAC mode
are given in (7)-(12):
IA+ =
IA

(7)

= (1 )
IC+ =

IC

= (1 )
IB+

IB

(9)

= (1 )

(11)

= + + + + +
= + +
= + +

Figure 2 - AAC topology

ARM CURRENT WAVEFORMS

In its classic operating mode, the MMC distributes equally

(i) the AC current between its upper and lower arms and (ii)
the DC current between the three different legs. The complete
set of equations describing the arm currents is given in (1)-(6).
The signs present in these equations depends on the direction
of the currents, using what is illustrated in Fig 1 and 2.
IA+ =
IA

2
IA

IB+
IB

IA

2
IB

IC+

2
IB

2
IC

IC =

2
IC

(10)
(12)

However the AAC inherently generates a 6-pulse ripple on

top of the DC current waveform as a consequence of the
alternating nature of the arm conduction periods. Since the
objective of this study is to migrate an already existing MMC
converter to an AAC mode of operation without having to
change the hardware but only by updating the control system
(i.e. software), installing a DC filter is out of question. To
resolve this issue, an additional active filtering current is
added to the arm currents in order to keep the DC current
smooth. This filtering current IF (13) is obtained by calculating
the ripple component of the DC current waveform resulting
from AAC operation in order to suppress it by adding a
circulating current of opposing sign through all three legs.

Figure 1 - Half-bridge MMC topology

II.

(8)

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)

(13)

The addition of this active filtering current alters the

original nature of the AAC mode as the arms will now
continuously run a current through them as opposed to for
only one half of the cycle and no current during the other half
of the cycle because the director switches would be closed.
However the magnitudes of the arm currents will be small for
a large proportion of the time, while the arm is not carrying
the main AC current, compared to the MMC mode of
operation, as shown in the simulation section below. Finally,
only the arm current waveform will be different because the
currents seen at both the AC and DC terminals of the converter
will be the same as under the normal MMC mode of operation.
III.

SIMULATION

A. Simulation Model
In order to assess the benefits of the AAC mode of
operation, a 120 MW MMC converter has been simulated
using Simulink and the Artemis toolbox in order to
simulate a reasonably large number of half-bridge cells. The
characteristics of this simulation model are listed in Table 1.
In order to better match realistic MMC converter, triplen
harmonic voltage injection has been used (about 15% of the

fundamental magnitude) in order to shape the converter

voltage waveform into an almost trapezoidal waveform and to
push the power rating to its theoretical maximum while still
using only half-bridge cells. Furthermore, a power loss
analysis has also been performed by post-processing the
voltage and current waveforms in each cells using the power
loss data from the datasheet of the 3.3 kV 1.2 kA HiPak IGBT
device 5SNA 1200E330100 [16] using the method described
in [7, 17] . In the later part of the simulation section, the steady
state junction temperature of the different semiconductor
devices in a cell (e.g. top and bottom IGBT and diode
modules) by applying the individual power loss figure of each
device into a power-thermal model derived in ANSIS and
verified in [17] and assuming a coolant temperature of 60C
shared by all the semiconductor devices.
Table 1 - Characteristics of the simulated MMC model

Rated power
DC bus
AC line
AC frequency
Triplen harmonic voltage
Number of cells per stack
Cell capacitor
Phase inductor
Arm inductor

120 MW
50 kV
55 kV
50 Hz
15%
56
8 mF
8 mH
6 mH

B. Arm current waveforms

The arm current waveforms resulting from this mode of
operation are observed in this section. Fig. 3 shows the top
arm current waveform in both MMC and AAC operating
modes (respectively the red and green curves) under unity
power factor rectifier mode. The third curve (blue) is the
result of the difference between the two waveforms and can
be interpreted as the equivalent circulating current which can
be injected in the converter to move from the MMC mode to
the AAC mode of operation. It can be observed that at unity
power factor a large amount of the fundamental cycle is spent
with a small amount of current magnitude in AAC mode as
opposed to the MMC mode. As more reactive power is
involved in the conversion process as shown in Fig 4 (same
amount of active and reactive power) and in Fig. 5 (reactive
power only), the arm current waveform becomes more and
more distorted in AAC mode with still a significant portion
of the cycle used by low magnitude current but at the expense
of an increasing peak values to attain twice the value in the
MMC mode. The power losses have computed for different
operating points and the results listed in Table 2 with the total
power loss values plotted in accordance to the angular value
of their respective operating points in Fig. 6.

Figure 3 - Arm A+ current waveform in MMC (red), AAC (green)

modes and the resulting circulating current (blue) with active power
only

Figure 4 - Arm A+ current waveform in MMC (red), AAC (green)

modes and the resulting circulating current (blue) with both active
and reactive powers

Figure 5 - Arm A+ current waveform in MMC (red), AAC (green)

modes and the resulting circulating current (blue) with reactive
power only

Table 2 Power losses of the MMC model depending on the mode of operation and operating point relative to the apparent power

Active Power
Reactive Power
Conduction
losses
MMC
Switching
mode
losses
Total
losses
Conduction
losses
AAC
Switching
mode
losses
Total
losses

1 pu
0 pu

0.7 pu
0.7 pu

0 pu
1 pu

-0.7 pu
0.7 pu

-1 pu
0 pu

-0.7 pu
-0.7 pu

0 pu
-1 pu

0.7 pu
-0.7 pu

0.50%

0.44%

0.36%

0.37%

0.38%

0.37%

0.35%

0.45%

0.15%

0.14%

0.13%

0.13%

0.15%

0.15%

0.15%

0.16%

0.65%

0.58%

0.49%

0.51%

0.53%

0.52%

0.50%

0.60%

0.53%

0.56%

0.51%

0.43%

0.38%

0.40%

0.49%

0.53%

0.16%

0.22%

0.24%

0.20%

0.17%

0.26%

0.30%

0.32%

0.69%

0.78%

0.75%

0.63%

0.55%

0.66%

0.79%

0.85%

Figure 7 - Arm current waveforms in MMC mode

Figure 6 - Power losses as percent of the total apparent power in

MMC and AAC modes for different operating points

C. Observation at unity power factor

The previous set of results indicates that this new AAC mode
is only potentially attractive for unity power factor only as
both the arm current peak values and the power losses are
increase dramatically when reactive power is involved in the
conversion process. The next part of this paper assumes that
only these two operating points (inverter and rectifier active
power only) are considered with the results focusing on the
rectifier mode mainly since the inverter mode is merely an
opposite phase angle version of the former.

Figure 8 - Arm current waveforms in AAC mode

Fig. 7 and 8 show the arm current waveforms respectively

in MMC and AAC modes of operation. On one hand, the
MMC mode results in the arms continuously conducting a
large amount of current as opposed to the AAC mode where a
significant part of the cycle is spent with only a small amount

of current (around -150 A). This remaining low magnitude

current mainly consists of the filtering current IF (13). On the
other hand, the peak value of the arm current currents is lower
in the MMC mode compared to the AAC mode (respectively
1.3 kA and 1.6 kA thus 23% higher in the AAC case).

generate approximately the same amount of power losses at

unity power factor as noted previously with the MMC mode
performing slightly better in switching losses while the AAC
mode wins on conduction losses. The simulation results are
summarized in Table 3.

Figure 9 Upper cell voltage waveforms in MMC mode at normal

PWM frequency (Fpwm = 169 Hz)

Figure 11 Upper cell voltage waveforms in AAC mode at normal

PWM frequency (Fpwm = 169 Hz)

Figure 10 Lower cell voltage waveforms in MMC mode at normal

PWM frequency (Fpwm = 169 Hz)

Figure 12 Lower cell voltage waveforms in AAC mode at normal

PWM frequency (Fpwm = 169 Hz)

The other observable difference between these two modes

of operation is the voltage deviation of the cell capacitors. Fig
9 and 11 present both the average and individual cell voltages
in one arm for respectively the MMC and AAC modes at the
same phase-shifted PWM [18] at the same frequency
(169 Hz). The AAC mode exhibits a lower voltage deviation,
both in average and individual voltages, due to the way the
voltage and current waveforms of its arms combine to create
the energy exchange. Furthermore, the waveforms of the
upper and lower stack voltages are similar in each modes of
operation (Fig. 9 and 10 for the MMC mode and Fig. 11
and 12 for the AAC mode), with the lower stack voltage
waveform being essentially a time-shifted version of the upper
stack voltage waveform. The individual cell voltages are more
evenly distributed around the average value in the AAC mode
of operation compared to the MMC mode. In the next section
of this paper, only the upper stack voltage will considered. In
terms of power efficiency, the two modes of operation

IV.

OPTIMIZATION SCENARIOS

A. Reduced PWM frequency

Since the AAC mode of operation improves the cell
voltage deviation, two possible optimizations can be done.
The first possible optimization consists of reducing the PWM
frequency. This will result in (i) higher differences between
the cell voltages but (ii) cell voltages still approximately
within the same envelope as in the MMC mode while (iii) the
switching losses will decrease. Fig. 13 and Table 3 (second
AAC column) show the results for a reduced PWM
frequency at 119 Hz. As predicted, the average cell voltage is
unaffected but the individual cell voltages are further
distributed around the average cell value but still
approximately within the limits of the MMC mode of
operation. The conduction losses are unchanged because the
current waveforms are unchanged but the switching losses
decreased because the IGBTs are not switching as often,
leading to a marginally better power efficiency figure.

Table 3 - Simulation results in rectifier mode at unity power factor

Mode of operation
Average cell voltage
PWM carrier frequency
Average peak-to-peak cell voltage
deviation
Maximum individual cell voltage
Minimum individual cell voltage
Arm current (Maximum value)
Arm current (Minimum value)
Arm current (Average value)
Arm current (RMS value)
Conduction losses
Switching losses
Total power losses
Power efficiency (semiconductor only)
Temperature IGBT 1 (steady state)
Temperature Diode 1 (steady state)
Temperature IGBT 2 (steady state)
Temperature Diode 2 (steady state)
Number of extra redundant cells

MMC
1.800 kV
169 Hz

AAC
1.800 kV
169 Hz

AAC
1.800 kV
119 Hz

AAC
1.880 kV
169 Hz

252 V

172 V

172 V

166 V

1,980 V
1,660 V
1,323 A
-503 A
402 A
753 A
468 kW
180 kW
648 kW
99.46%
75C
74C
74C
100C
0

1,954 V
1,696 V
1,643 A
-244 A
402 A
803 A
459 kW
202 kW
661 kW
99.45%
74C
72C
75C
104C
0

1,942 V
1,673 V
1,643 A
-244 A
402 A
803 A
459 kW
156 kW
615 kW
99.49%
72C
70C
75C
103C
0

2,003 V
1,767 V
1,643 A
-244 A
402 A
803 A
459 kW
209 kW
668 kW
99.44%
73C
72C
76C
104C
2.8 (5%)

Figure 13 Upper cell voltage waveforms in AAC mode with

reduced PWM frequency (Fpwm = 119 Hz)

Figure 14 Upper cell voltage waveforms in AAC mode with higher

nominal cell voltages (Vcell = 1,880 V)

B. Increased average cell voltage

The second possible optimization is to use the maximum
cell voltage headroom made available by the reduced cell
voltage deviation. This optimization will result in a small
number of cells (around 5% in this case) being made
redundant, thus increasing the overall reliability of the
converter station in case of cell failures. Fig. 14 shows that the
cells can be charged up to the new nominal value of 1,880 V
with the highest peak value for the individual cell voltages
being not much higher than in the MMC case.

Table 3 shows that the switching losses went up

proportionally to the higher nominal cell voltage. However, it
could be possible to reduce further the power losses, e.g. by
bypassing electrically the now-redundant cells. The peak-topeak voltage deviation is lower than in the other AAC mode
cases because of the quadratic nature of the relationship
between the cell voltage deviation and the energy deviation.
The latter is still unchanged but the higher nominal cell
voltage means that the energy deviation will happen at a
higher part of the quadratic curve, hence the slightly smaller
resulting voltage deviation.

V.

CONCLUSION

The AAC mode of operation of an existing MMC station

has been presented in this paper. This new mode of operation
does not require any hardware modification of the converter
station but rather an update of the control system, hence
mainly software. Generally the power losses increase in the
AAC mode of operation compared to the MMC mode but are
approximately the same when operating close to unity power.
Given this fact, the study focused only on active power
conversion operating points. In this condition, the AAC-mode
still exhibits higher peak arm current combined with a
significant part of the cycle at low current magnitudes but,
most importantly, smaller cell voltage deviations (e.g. 30%
lower) compared to the classic MMC mode are observed.
This last fact can be used to further optimize the
performance of the MMC converter station in two different
ways. First, reducing the switching frequency of the PWM
signal will result in a substantial decrease in the switching
losses, hence a higher power efficiency figure for the
converter station. This leads also to an increase of the
individual cell voltage deviations but those are still contained
within the same limits set during the previous MMC mode.
Second, increasing slightly the nominal voltage of the cells
results in having some cells being made redundant
(approximately 5% of the cells in each stack) since the stacks
are able to produce more voltage than normally required.
Despite the higher nominal voltage, the maximum peak value
hit by the cell voltages is still the same maximum value set
during the previous MMC mode of operation. From here,
either (i) these redundant cells are electrically bypassed in
order to further improve the power efficiency of the converter
station, or (ii) they can be used as back-up cells in case of other
cell failures, thus further improving the overall reliability of
the MMC.
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