Flying Capacitor Multicell (FCM) converters are
very interesting alternative for medium voltage and high power
applications. The main reason is increase in the number of
output voltage levels and its apparent frequency. Balancing of
flying capacitors voltages is an important constraint to proper
performance of FCM converters. So, observation of these flying
capacitors voltages for using in active control is valuable where
using voltage sensors results in increasing cost and size of the
converter. This paper presents a new strategy to estimate flying
capacitors voltages of FCM converters. The proposed strategy is
based on discrete time model of converter. So, advantage of the
proposed strategy is its simplicity which is effective for real time
implementation. The circuit is simulated using PSCAD/EMTDC
software and simulation results are presented to validate the
effectiveness of the proposed estimation strategy to observe the
flying capacitors voltages.