Cascaded H-Bridge converters are extensively used for medium voltage grid integration in solar energy systems. To ensure reliable operation of converter under the varying grid voltage conditions closed loop operation is essential. A key element of this control strategy is accurate voltage sensing, which enables safe scaling from high system voltages to controller-level signals while maintaining required electrical isolation. For the designed H-Bridge, which is the basic building block for Cascaded H-Bridge, voltage sensing is performed using a differential amplifier, and a modulator circuit is employed to convert the sensed voltage signal into PWM pulses. These PWM pulses are then transmitted to the controller board using AFBR series optical transmitters and receivers. A low-pass demodulator circuit is used after the receiver circuit to reconstruct the modulated signal, and the output of the demodulator is connected to the ADC pin on the microcontroller for closed-loop operation. Scaling from system level voltage to controller level is achieved by using a differential amplifier, which is realised by using TLV2372ID op-amp. Conversion of low voltage signal to PWM signal is achieved by using TL594 PWM controller IC. Isolation between the HV power and the LV controller is provided by using optical Tx-Rx system. The signal flow for the voltage sensing scheme is shown. This work was done by NCPRE student Kalyan under the guidance of Prof. B. G. Fernandes.
Signal flow for the Voltage Sensing Scheme.