Emerging Techniques and Applications of Modular Multilevel Converters

The 10th IEEE International Power Electronics and
       Motion Control Conference - ECCE Asia
               May 24 - May 27, 2021
                     Singapore
                              Special Session on
    “Emerging Techniques and Applications of Modular
                 Multilevel Converters”
                     Organized by
   Shunfeng Yang, Southwest Jiaotong University, syang@swjtu.edu.cn
         Jinyu Wang, Shandong University, jinyu88330@126.com
  Huan Qiu, Nanyang Technological University, qiuh0009@e.ntu.edu.sg
Call for Papers
Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) is one of the key players in recent
years for high-voltage-high-power industrial applications, such as HVDC
transmission systems, medium voltage motor drives, and power electronics
transformers, etc., and received lots of attention in the past decade, from
both academia and industry. MMCs are composed of identical submodules
(SMs) connected in series, each one built up with standard components.
The highly modular structure enables easy scalability of voltage and
current, facilitates redundancy and fault-tolerant operation, and achieves
high availability, excellent quality of the output waveforms, low
requirement of filters, and the capability of transformerless operation.
Despite all these distinctive advantages and the wide potential application
prospect, MMCs demand a more complex control system compared with
traditional voltage source converters (VSCs). They have to manage multiple
control objectives and manipulate hundreds of SMs simultaneously.
Though MMC has been implemented in many applications in the past two
decades, it is still with great potential in emerging applications, for instance,
microgrids with high renewable penetration that need frequency support,
medium voltage power system for marine vessels, railway power supply

systems, and electric vehicle motor drives with battery-balancing capability.
These challenges have been the main reason for recent and ongoing
research. This Special Issue is focused on the latest research achievements
of modular multilevel converters as well as their emerging applications.
Topics of interest of this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:
      ƒ Circuit topology variations
      ƒ Advanced modulation and control of modular multilevel
          converters
      ƒ MMC distributed control and control system optimization
      ƒ MMC in micro-grids with high renewable penetration
      ƒ Fault analysis and tolerant
      ƒ Sub-module capacitor voltage balancing at low switching
          frequencies
      ƒ Sub-module capacitor size reduction
      ƒ Integration of new power devices in modular multilevel
          converters
      ƒ MMC for electrified transportation
      ƒ Integration of renewable energy and energy storage with
          modular multilevel converters
      ƒ Applications in HVDC, MTDC, FACTS, motor drives, power
          electronic transformers, smart grid, etc.
      ƒ Stability analysis of modular multilevel converters in emerging
          applications
      ƒ Operation control of modular multilevel converters in emerging
          applications under non-ideal conditions

ƒ Technical Committee Sponsoring the Special Session (if
 any):

 ƒ Brief CV of SS Organizers (photo, name, email, and short
 CV (similar to Transactions paper CV))
Prof. Shunfeng Yang
Senior Member, IEEE
Shunfeng Yang (S'15-M’18-SM’20) received the B.Eng. and
M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Southwest Jiaotong
University, Chengdu, China, in 2007 and 2010, respectively, and the
Ph.D. degree in Power Engineering from Nanyang Technologica l
University, Singapore, in 2018. He was with Temasek Polytechnic,
Singapore Technologies Kinetics Ltd., Singapore, from 2009 to
2017. He is currently an Associate Professor at Southwest Jiaotong University. His
research interests include power electronics, control and operation of Modular Multile ve l
Converters, and converter control techniques.
Dr. Yang has applied 8 Chinese Patents (2 authorized and 6 in-process) and published
more than 40 technical papers, including 19 top-tier IEEE Transactions and 14 IEEE key
conference papers. He has one Highlighted Paper of IEEE Transactions on Power
Electronics 2018 July Issue and one ESI Top 1% Highly Cited paper. Dr. Yang received
one Best Paper Award in the 2016 ECCE-Asia international conference and won the 2018
Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-finance Student Abroad.

P濦濣濚. Jinyu Wang

Jinyu Wang received the Ph.D. Degree in electrical engineer ing
from Shandong University, Jinan, China, in 2017. From 2017 to
2019, he worked as a Research Fellow in Rolls-Royce @ Nanyang
Technological University Cooperate Lab, Singapore. From 2019
to 2020, he worked at Energy Research Institute @ Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. Since 2020, he joined the
School of Electrical Engineering, Shandong University, China as
a Full Professor. Dr. Wang received the excellent doctoral thesis
award of Shandong province in 2018. He has published more than
40 academic papers and as the first author received the “best conference paper award”
from RPG 2019, IET international conference, and ICPS 2020 IEEE internatio na l
conference. His main research interests include advanced analysis, modeling, and control
of multilevel power converters, integration of renewable energy as well as smart grid.

Huan Qiu (S’18) received the B.Eng. degree in electrical
engineering and automation from Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2015, the B.Eng.
degree in electronic and electrical engineering from Univers ity
of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 2015, and the
M.Sc. degree in power engineering from the School of Electrica l
and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological Univers ity,
Singapore, in 2016, where he is currently working toward the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering. Meanwhile, he is a
research associate with Nanyang Technological University.
His research interests include distributed energy storage
systems, virtual inertia, and modular multilevel converters.