Soft-switching of the director switch in the alternate arm converter using blocked sub-modules

The presence of Director Switches (DS) in its arms enables the Alternate Arm Converter (AAC) to generate smooth current waveforms while using a reduced number of Sub-Modules (SMs) when compared to the Modular Multilevel Converter. To maximise the power efficiency of the AAC and simplify the DS design, it is highly beneficial to soft-switch the DS. This paper presents a method which reliably ensures their soft-switching operation using the blocked state of SMs during the non-conducting part of the cycle of an arm. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method over a wide range of operating conditions.