A Back-to-Back 2L-3L Grid Integration of a Marine Current Energy Converter

The paper proposes a back-to-back 2L-3L grid connection topology for a marine current energy converter. A prototype marine current energy converter has been deployed by a research group at Uppsala University. The concept behind the prototype revolves around a fixed pitch vertical axis turbine directly connected to a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The proposed grid connection system utilizes a well known and proven two level voltage source converter generator-side combined with a three-level cascaded H-bridge (CHB) multilevel converter grid-side. The multilevel converter brings benefits in terms of efficiency, power quality and DC-link utilization. The system is here presented for a single marine current energy converter but can easily be scaled up for clusters of marine current energy converters. Control schemes for both grid-side and generator-side voltage source converters are presented. The start-up, steady state and dynamic performance of the marine current energy converter are investigated and simulation results are presented in this paper.