Multilevel conversion circuit having a flying capacitor and method for precharging the same are provided. The multilevel conversion circuit includes: a first bridge arm including a plurality of switches connected in series; a second bridge arm including a plurality of switches connected in series and a flying capacitor group, midpoints of the two bridge arms connected to a power supply and an inductor to form a series branch; a DC bus capacitor to which the two bridge arms are connected in parallel; a first voltage clamping module connected between a first end of the flying capacitor group and a first end of the DC bus capacitor; and a second voltage clamping module connected between a second end of the flying capacitor group and a second end of the DC bus capacitor.

A multilevel conversion circuit having a flying capacitor is provided, including: a first bridge arm; a second bridge arm including a flying capacitor, the midpoints of the second and first bridge arms connected to a series branch defined by a first current limiting circuit, a power supply and an inductor; a DC bus capacitor connected in parallel to the first and second bridge arms; a rectifier circuit having an input end coupled to the power supply and an output end connected to a first auxiliary power supply; and a controller coupled to the first auxiliary power supply and the plurality of switches of the second bridge arm to control corresponding switches of the second bridge arm, the power supply charges the flying capacitor through the corresponding switches of the first and second bridge arms and the first current limiting circuit.

An inductor is connected between a switching node and an output line. The first switch and the second switch are connected in series between an input line and a ground line. A third switch is connected between the switching node and the input line. A flying capacitor is connected across the third switch and the first switch. A controller IC drives the first switch to the third switch.

The present disclosure provides a bidirectional hybrid power converter that may include an input circuit consisting of an input power supply and input capacitor, a plurality of switches connected to each other, to input power supply to a set of passive electronic components, to ground and to an output circuit comprising one or more output terminals, each consisting of an output capacitance. The plurality of switches is connected directly or through passive electronic components in an arrangement to obtain a plurality of power converter networks for battery charging as well as other applications by reuse of a set of plurality of switches. The input power supply and the output load are referred to based on the direction of the power conversion flow, forward or reverse. The first terminal can be connected to both a power source as an input and load as an output.

The present disclosure provides a method and apparatus using a novel PWM switching technique that requires only one PWM carrier signal and benefits from two logic functions to provide switching signals and provides the flying capacitor (FC) voltage as well as dc-link capacitors voltages regulated to their desired values without external control. It may also, eliminate the odd multiples of the switching harmonic clusters from the output voltage is possible; double the frequency of first switching harmonic; reduce filtering efforts may be required since the values of the output LC filter inductor and capacitor can be very much reduced. Furthermore, notable reduction in control complexity is possible using the novel PWM method.

Multiphase power converter with CLC resonant circuit. One example is a method of operation a power converter, the method including: charging, during a first on-time, a first output inductor by way of a first switching-tank circuit defining a first switch node coupled to a first lead of a resonant inductor; creating, during the first on-time, a first current flow into the first switching-tank circuit through the resonant inductor; and then charging, during a second on-time, a second output inductor by way of a second switching-tank circuit defining a second switch node coupled to a second lead of the resonant inductor; and creating, during the second on-time, a second current flow into the second switching-tank circuit through the resonant inductor.

Power converter for converting between a DC voltage and a AC voltage. The power converter may include: a DC link with a series of three capacitors, the outer nodes of the series forming an upper and a lower DC terminal and connection points between the capacitors forming an upper and a lower intermediate voltage node; and one or more phase legs. Each phase leg includes: an upper switch series between the upper DC terminal and the lower intermediate voltage node, with two semiconductor switches; a lower switch series between the lower DC terminal and the upper intermediate voltage node, with two semiconductor switches; and an inner switch series between the midpoints of the upper and the lower switch series, the inner switch series comprising two semiconductor switches, the midpoint forming an AC terminal of the power converter, wherein the semiconductor switches of the inner switch series are bidirectional semiconductor switches.

Systems and methods for supplying power (both active and reactive) at a medium voltage from a DCSTATCOM to an IT load without using a transformer are disclosed. The DCSTATCOM includes an energy storage device, a two-stage DC-DC converter, and a multi-level inverter, each of which are electrically coupled to a common negative bus. The DC-DC converter may include two stages in a bidirectional configuration. One stage of the DC-DC converter uses a flying capacitor topology. The voltages across the capacitors of the flying capacitor topology are balanced and switching losses are minimized by fixed duty cycle operation. The DC-DC converter generates a high DC voltage from a low or high voltage energy storage device such as batteries and/or ultra-capacitors. The multi-level, neutral point, diode-clamped inverter converts the high DC voltage into a medium AC voltage using a space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) technique.

A switched-mode power regulator circuit has four solid-state switches connected in series and a capacitor and an inductor that regulate power delivered to a load. The solid-state switches are operated such that a voltage at the load is regulated by repetitively (1) charging the capacitor causing a current to flow in the inductor and (2) discharging the capacitor causing current to flow in the inductor. The power regulator circuit may be configured to operate with zero current switching at frequencies in the range of 100 MHz, enabling it to be fabricated on a unitary silicon die along with the load that it powers.

A multi-level converter comprises one or more flying capacitors configured to operate at balanced voltages. The multi-level converter comprises a plurality of switching groups comprising pairs of switches operable to transfer energy to and from an inductor and the one or more flying capacitors for inverting an input voltage to an inverted output voltage. The multi-level converter comprises the inductor configured to operate according to an inductor frequency greater than a switching frequency used to control the plurality of switching groups.