The availability of high voltage, high current and high-speed power electronic devices has led to increase in popularity of several power electronic applications such as FACTS. A STATCOM is one such power electronic converter, from the FACTS family, which can be used to improve the power factor of a transmission line, maintain the connected bus at the required voltage level, etc. In distribution power level, D-STATCOMs are used to achieve the same objectives. Several power converter topologies have been proposed for STATCOMs and D-STATCOMs, ranging from a standard two-level VSC based topology to a cascaded full-bridge based topology. The cascaded full-bridge based topology might be suitable for high power STATCOM applications but might not be the best option at the lower power level of a D-STATCOM. D-STATCOMs therefore often use a standard two-level converter-based topology owing to cost constraints.
The research work presented in this thesis proposes a new power electronic topology which can be used for D-STATCOM applications. This topology is essentially composed of multiple cascaded h-bridge cells in each phase of a standard two-level converter. The two-level converter provides bulk of the power output and operates at a low switching frequency, whereas the h-bridge cell operates at a higher switching frequency and achieve power quality objectives. This research work initially presents simulations to validate the proposed topology. Outer control is proposed to operate the proposed topology as a D-STATCOM. Inner control loops are proposed to maintain the DC-link voltage of the h-bridge cells. An experimental prototype of the proposed topology is also developed. The results obtained from the proposed topology are compared with that obtained from a standard two-level converter-based topology. It is shown that due to the h-bridge cell action in the proposed topology, the obtained current THD is low in comparison to a standard two-level VSC based topology being used as a D-STATCOM.