Design and Implementation of Space Vector Modulation Based Sliding Mode Control for Grid-Connected 3 L-NPC Inverter

This paper presents a closed-loop space vector modulation (SVM) based sliding mode controller (SMC) for a three-level grid connected neutral point clamped (3L-NPC) inverter. The nonlinear SMC based on Gao’s reaching law has been designed to control the grid current and inject desired amount of active and reactive power into the network. Due to using single DC source at the NPC inverter DC bus, neutral point voltage is controlled through redundant switching states and instantaneous DC voltage feedback integrated into SVM technique. Meanwhile, there is no external voltage controller involved, thus no associated fine tuning issues are existed. The performance of the proposed hybrid controller to inject a desired active/reactive power to the grid is investigated through external perturbations such as change in the line current amplitude/phase shift, AC voltage fluctuation as well as DC voltage variation. Full converter state space model was developed and simulated. Experimental results are provided to verify the fast dynamic performance, low content of line current THD%, and good voltage balancing of DC bus capacitors of the NPC inverter.