Power electronics is a major candidate in the ongoing research of electrical power grids because they can provide better control with more information (voltage ratio, efficiency, power flow direction, etc.) than the all-passive solutions such as transformers and so forth. Power electronic transformer has the possibility to replace the conventional one by ac/ac matrix converter with high-frequency compact electronic transformers. In this work, a dynamic model of matrix converter is studied and issues such as efficiency, voltage ratio limitation, and transient behavior are discussed and the equivalent numerical calculations are presented. Moreover, an experimental converter is built to validate the numerical results and also to describe the switching frequency impact on the operation. It is concluded that the control creates voltage ratio saturation and high-switching frequency results in lower efficiency values. On the other hand, efficiency can be increased by using resonances of the circuit, which can also provide higher operating frequencies. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.