Grid filter design for a multi-megawatt medium-voltage voltage source inverter

Abstract

This paper describes the design procedure and performance of an LCL grid filter for a medium-voltage neutral point clamped (NPC) converter to be adopted for a multimegawatt wind turbine. The unique filter design challenges in this application are driven by a combination of the medium voltage converter, a limited allowable switching frequency, component physical size and weight concerns, and the stringent limits for allowable injected current harmonics. Traditional design procedures of grid filters for lower power and higher switching frequency converters are not valid for a multi-megawatt filter connecting a medium-voltage converter switching at low frequency to the electric grid. This paper demonstrates a frequency domain model based approach to determine the optimum filter parameters that provide the necessary performance under all operating conditions given the necessary design constraints. To achieve this goal, new concepts such as virtual harmonic content and virtual filter losses are introduced. Moreover, a new passive damping technique that provides the necessary damping with low losses and very little degradation of the high-frequency attenuation is proposed.