To improve the state-of-charge (SOC) balancing ability and reduce the power loss

this paper proposes a discontinuous pulsewidth modulation (DPWM)-based battery power management method for cascaded H-bridge converter-based battery energy storage systems (CHB-BESS). First

two types of voltage-clamping principles are designed for each submodule (SM) of the CHB-BESS. Second

to address the limitations of conventional DPWM with fixed low power adjustment in CHB converter applications

the proposed method determines the maximum number of voltage-clamping SMs according to their SOC values and the output voltage references of the CHB-BESS. As a result

the SOC balancing ability can be fully exploited under both active and reactive power operation conditions

and the total power loss of the CHB-BESS can be substantially reduced. Finally

voltage-clamping SMs are selected according to their SOC sorting results

and the output voltage references of remaining non-voltage-clamping SMs are recalculated for modulation. Simulation and experimental results indicate that under varying active and reactive power operation conditions

the proposed method can improve the SOC balancing speed and reduce the power loss of the CHB-BESS.