Real-time simulation of modular multilevel converters for controller hardware-in-the-loop testing

This study presents a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based real-time simulation platform for realistic-size modular multilevel converters (MMCs). This development is primarily intended for controller hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing for MMC-based high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems. Although the real-time simulation of MMC-based systems is particularly challenging due to the presence of thousands of power electronic switches, yet, it is still possible based on adopting a computationally efficient MMC model and the use of a high-performance parallel computational engine. This study focuses on the design and implementation of the parallel computational engine that solves the mathematical model of an enhanced computationally efficient MMC model on the FPGA platform. Moreover, provided are the implementation results and their verifications corresponding to the real-time simulation of a 401-level MMC and the HIL testing of the controllers of the 401-level MMC-HVDC link between France and Spain.