The modern trend of decarbonization has encouraged intensive research on renewable energy (RE)-based distributed power generation (DG) and smart grid, where advanced electronic power interfaces are necessary for connecting the generator with power grids and various electrical systems. On the other hand, modern technologies such as Industry 4.0 and electrical vehicles (EV) have higher requirements for power converters than that of conventional applications. Consequently, the enhancement of power interfaces will play an important role in the future power generation and distribution systems as well as various industrial applications. It has been discovered that wide-bandgap (WBG) switching devices such as gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) and silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) offer considerable potential for outperforming conventional silicon (Si) switching devices in terms of breakdown voltage, high temperature capability, switching speed, and conduction losses. This paper investigates the performance of a 2kVA three-phase static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) based on a GaN HEMTs-based voltage-source inverter (VSI) and a neural network-based hybrid control scheme. The proportional-integral (PI) controllers along with a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) controller for fast reactive power control are designed in synchronous reference frame (SRF). Both simulation and hardware implementation are conducted. Results confirm that the proposed RBFNN assisted hybrid control scheme yields excellent dynamic performance in terms of various reactive power tracking control of the GaN HEMTs-based three-phase STATCOM system.
Keywords: gallium nitride (GaN); high electron mobility transistor (HEMT); static synchronous compensator (STATCOM); wide bandgap (WBG).