High-speed simulation of modular multilevel converters for optimization based design

Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) are being widely considered for shipboard applications. Designing such converters through multi-objective optimization is of interest, because such an approach allows the trade-off between competing objectives (for example, mass and loss) to be explicitly and quantitatively identified. However, doing so can require 10 4 –10 6 time domain simulations in order to rigorously explore the design space. In this work, a computationally efficient simulation is developed to estimate the MMC waveforms. While the existing literature sets forth average-value models for transient studies of MMCs, fast waveform-level models are still needed. This work presents a suitable approach which is validated against a detailed simulation model.