ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,706,548, issued on Aug. 11.
"Modular multi-level AC-AC converter" was invented by Gregory Kish (Edmonton, Canada) and Anjana Wijesekera (Edmonton, Canada).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A modular multilevel AC-AC converter is provided which allows for the direct conversion of AC power between different voltage levels using half-bridge submodules. The converter has a partial power processing topology that exploits internal circulating DC currents to facilitate charge balance of submodule capacitors. This power transfer mechanism eliminates the centralized DC link required in conventional back-to-back modular multilevel converter (B2B-MMC) ...