RHU engineers continue to present valuable research that makes RHU proud. Class 2021 electrical engineering graduate Ahmad Hulayhel recently published his valuable research paper Delay Compensation in Model Predictive Control for Multi-level Inverters. His paper is part of his MSc thesis under the supervision of RHU professor Mohamad Taha. It was presented at the 2022 Africa and International Use of Energy Conference, one of the biggest energy conferences in South Africa, held between 28 and 29 November, 2022.
The ABET Accredited electrical engineering program at RHU strongly focuses on renewable energy research and development. Faculty members give students tremendous support to pursue advanced education, research, and development. RHU believes that only through innovation can a university best serve its students and meet the needs of employers.
This paper provides a delay compensation method for a system having a multi-level inverter (three-phase three-level inverter Neutral-Point Clamped inverter) with a model predictive control strategy. The model predictive control decreases the computational effort for Model Predictive Current Control (MPCC) to predict future load current values for all twenty-seven switching states generated by the inverter.
A compensation strategy is applied to reduce the number of calculations needed, which usually results in a time delay in the actuation or deteriorated performance. Comparison between a system using delay compensation and system without delay compensation verifies how the compensation affects the desired outcome and the whole system performance.