Precision switching for carrier based PWM

1. A voltage source converter station including a multilevel voltage source converter, for conversion of electrical power between AC and DC, and a control system, the voltage source converter comprises a plurality of switching cells including switchable semiconductors, and the control system comprises at least one main control unit for providing a voltage reference signal to a plurality of included cell control units, each cell control unit using carrier based pulse width modulation for controlling the switching of a respective cell, wherein the main control unit is communicatively connected to the cell control units and provides the reference voltage signal to each cell control unit and each cell control unit creates a switching signal to each respective switching cell using the reference voltage signal and a carrier signal to effectuate the conversion characterized in that

each of the cell control units process signals at a higher frequency than the main control unit, wherein each cell control unit includes a reference signal reconstruction unit, for adapting the voltage reference signal to the higher frequency of the cell control unit, which signal reconstruction unit is adapted to provide a reconstructed reference voltage signal by interpolating sampling values of the reference voltage signal.

2. The voltage source converter station according to claim 1 , wherein the interpolation is a linear interpolation between consecutive sampling points of the reference voltage signal.

3. The voltage source converter station according to claim 1 , wherein each cell control unit includes a carrier signal generator, and generates the carrier signal.

4. The voltage source converter station according to claim 1 , wherein each cell control unit includes a comparator for comparing the carrier signal and a reference signal, and the creation of the switching signal includes comparing the carrier signal and the reconstructed reference voltage signal.

5. The voltage source converter station according to claim 1 , wherein each cell control unit includes a switching in-activator for avoiding unnecessary switching by holding the switching signal constant.

6. The voltage source converter station according to claim 5 , wherein the switching in-activator includes a small value detector, and the in-activator is arranged to only hold the modulation signal constant when the reference voltage signal is smaller than a threshold value.

7. The voltage source converter station according to claim 6 , wherein the threshold value being 15% of a nominal amplitude value of the reference voltage signal.

8. The voltage source converter station according to claim 6 , wherein the switching in-activator includes an edge detector arranged for detecting switching pulses in the switching signal, and the switching in-activator is adapted to hold the switching signal constant a short time period after a switching signal is detected and the reference voltage signal is smaller than the threshold.

9. The voltage source converter station according to claim 8 , wherein the short time period corresponds to the data rate of the main control unit and is the same, or approximately the same as, the time between two sampling values of the reference voltage signal.

10. The voltage source converter station according to claim 1 , having at least eight switching cells per phase of the AC.

11. The voltage source converter station according to claim 10 , having at least 20 switching cells per phase of the AC.

12. The voltage source converter station according to claim 1 , wherein the carrier based pulse width modulation has a pulse number that is twelve or less.

13. The voltage source converter station according to claim 12 , wherein the pulse number is less than 8.

14. The voltage source converter station according to claim 1 , wherein the carrier based pulse width modulation has a pulse number that is a non-integer.