A H bridge PEBB for STATCOMs and other VSC applications

The US navy introduced the concept of power electronic building blocks as part of the All Electric Ship Programme. The concept has gathered acceptance for the implementation of converters for ratings of a few hundred kW, and in a few cases even a few MW. This contribution for the IEEE power summer meeting in Toronto 2003 describes a 2 MW PEBB, and discusses whether the PEBB concept is applicable also to the very large converters used in HVDC and FACTS applications.