11kW, 70kHz LLC Converter Design with Adaptive Input Voltage for 98% Efficiency in an MMC

Although there are numerous design methodologies for the LLC resonant converter, they often do not consider the possibility of input voltage adjustment. In the proposed concept, a modular multi-level converter (MMC) is used to step-down the three-phase medium voltage of 10 kV, and provide up to 1 MW of pure DC power to the load consisting of electrolyzers for hydrogen generation. Therefore, each module is extended by an LLC resonant converter to adapt to the specific electrolyzers DC voltage range of 142...220 V and to provide galvanic isolation. In order to achieve a high efficiency for a wide range of load conditions, the input voltage of the LLC converter is adjusted between 600 V and 770 V while operating at resonance or close to resonance. The parameters of the 11kW LLC resonant converter with an integrated leakage inductance are systematically optimized to maximize the efficiency for all loads while achieving zero-voltage switching. For a fast estimation of eddy current losses, a new method is proposed, which uses a single FEM simulation to fit newly developed loss equations. The calculated average efficiency is 97.8%. The prototype of the LLC converter reaches a peak efficiency of over 98% at resonance at half load which is similar to the precalculated value.