A capacitor based single source MLI with natural balancing and less component for EV/HEV application

Abstract

SummaryDue to their remarkable performance, capacitor‐based inverters have recently gained attention. Hence, a new capacitor‐based multilevel inverter is presented in this paper for electric and hybrid electric vehicle (EV and HEV) applications. EV systems are quite well for their use of two‐level inverters; however, the generated load voltage comprises substantial undesirable harmonic content. It is regarded as one of the most efficient methods since replacing a two‐level inverter with a multilevel inverter improves the power quality despite significantly reducing total harmonic distortion. Therefore, the recommended filter dimension will also be minimized. A flurry of reliability concerns has arisen due to the increased number of devices, circuit complexity, and stress on the circuit devices. A nine‐level voltage waveform is created with only ten IGBTs, a DC‐Source, and two capacitors. In the proposed nine‐level inverter, the capacitor voltage is balanced utilizing a simple control approach to regulate the flying capacitor (FC) voltages actively. Here described a simple logic gate‐based pulse‐width modulation technique that ensures capacitor power balancing. The proposed inverter operation and capability are validated by experimental results derived from a laboratory prototype. Finally, by contrasting the new and standard inverter topologies, the virtues of the suggested architecture by the number of devices and price of the equipment are highlighted, and it is a simpler structure that requires less space and footprint area.