DC chopper for MMC cell with integrated chopper resistor

摘要

A Direct Current (DC) chopper may be integrated into the Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) cells of a power converter. The integrated DC chopper may include chopper resistors that may also be advantageously integrated into a heat sink for a power module including at least the power transistors of the MMC cell. The safe discharge of both cell capacitors and DC-link capacitors in different operating conditions is performed using Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs) and chopper resistors of an MMC cell.