Isolation Forest Based Submodule Open-Circuit Fault Localization Method for Modular Multilevel Converters

Fault localization is one of the most important issues for modular multilevel converters (MMCs) consisting of numerous switches. This article proposes an isolation forest (IF) based submodule (SM) switch open-circuit fault localization method for MMCs. Based on the continuous sampling SM capacitor voltages, a number of isolation trees (ITs) are produced to construct the IFs for MMCs. Through the comparison of continuous IFs’ outputs, the faulty SM can be effectively localized. The proposed IF-based fault localization method only requires SM capacitor voltages in the MMC to construct concise low-data-volume tree models, and uses sparsity and difference properties of outlier data to localize fault, and accordingly it simplifies calculation complexity. In addition, it does not require the MMC's mathematical models and manual setting of empirical thresholds. Simulation and experiment are conducted, and the results confirm the effectiveness of proposed method.