## 6 Conclusions  
While MCs have been widely studied for a wide range of applications, their application to LVDC distribution systems is worthy of further discussion due to three main issues. First, a modular topology seems to be of the utmost importance for distribution systems application, but this issue is often overlooked. Second, electronic power converters  
Figure 14: Port 5: (**a**) voltage \(v_{5}\)+ reference (black) and actual value (red); and (**b**) voltage \(v_{5}\)– reference (black) and actual value (red) during the short circuit on port 6.  
Figure 12: Port 6: (**a**) voltage \(v_{6}\)+ (black) and current \(i^{*}\)_load 6_ (red); and (**b**) voltage \(v_{6}\)– (black) and current \(i^{-}\)_load 6_ (red) during the short circuit on port 6.  
introduce a discontinuity in the neutral wire and earthing management of hybrid AC/DC systems, which is usually addressed by introducing galvanically isolated converters, resulting in unnecessary cascaded conversion stages and complex earthing management. Third, the possibility of exploiting converter control capabilities to mitigate fault effects is scarcely explored.  
In order to overcome the issues of limited modularity, interference with the state of active parts towards earth, and controllability in fault conditions, a new MC for hybrid distribution systems is introduced in this paper. This introduces two main contributions for MC applications: first, a new MC topology is introduced, and an innovative control structure based on two control layers is proposed, including a pseudo-sliding mode controller directly acting on semiconductor switching, and an inverse dynamic control approach applied to voltage controller design. Second, to overcome the lack of effective DC circuit breakers, which represents a traditional issue in DC systems, the proposed control approach is developed with particular attention to current controllability during faults, and the proposed MC properties are investigated with respect to this issue.  
The presented results highlight that the proposed MC converter and its control algorithms can effectively manage different loads, providing a high-quality power supply not affected by abrupt load variations or faults on other ports. Additionally, the proposed MC was shown to behave as a fault-tolerant power hub, and can be integrated in hybrid distribution systems protection algorithms without the traditional limitations of power converters that may suffer damage from grid faults.  
Conceptualization, S.N. and G.U.; methodology, S.N. and G.U.; software, S.N.; validation, S.N., G.U. and R.S.F.; formal analysis, S.N.; investigation, S.N. and G.U.; resources, R.S.F.; data curation, S.N.; writing--original draft preparation, S.N. and G.U.; writing--review and editing, S.N. and R.S.F.; visualization, S.N. and R.S.F.; supervision, R.S.F.; project administration, R.S.F.; funding acquisition, R.S.F. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
Not applicable.  
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.  
Author [PERSON] is a collaborator of the company E.C. & C. srl. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.