A New Asymmetric Cascaded Multilevel Converter Topology With Reduced Voltage Stress and Number of Switches

Rahim Samanbakhsh,Fernando Martin,Federico Martin Ibanez,Peyman Koohi

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3092691

Rahim Samanbakhsh, Fernando Martin + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2021.3092691

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Journal: IEEE Access	Publication Date: Jan 1, 2021
Citations: 16	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology

Abstract

This paper presents a new structure of a multilevel inverter with fewer components, which is suitable for renewable energy sources and industrial loads applications. The structure has three unequal input sources and ten switches that can generate a 15-level output voltage. Furthermore, it can be connected in cascade for increasing, even more, the number of levels and output voltage. The main feature of the proposed inverter is its very low harmonic distortion at the output voltage and current due to the control method, which is based on the nearest level control method for generating a high-quality output voltage. A typical application of this inverter is in solar cells and wind turbines. Both simulations in Matlab/Simulink and experimental results in a scaled-down prototype validate the proposed theoretical analysis.

Highlights

Multilevel inverters are applicable in medium voltage and high power applications such as electrical motor drives, energy storage systems, reactive power compensators, and flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) [1,2]
This paper presents a new structure of a multilevel inverter with fewer components, which is suitable for renewable energy sources and industrial loads applications
A new topology for multilevel inverter was described in this paper for renewable energy sources and industrial loads applications

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Multilevel inverters are applicable in medium voltage and high power applications such as electrical motor drives, energy storage systems, reactive power compensators, and flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) [1,2]. The single basic unit needs three DC sources and only ten switches, which can produce a sinusoidal output with 15 levels. This way, the proposed single unit offers a great tradeoff between the number of DC sources, number of switches, and the number of levels, producing a very low distortion in the output port This inverter can be widely used as an interface for renewable energy sources and high-voltage overhead distribution lines [13,14]. In the proposed multilevel inverter, the waveform of output current can be considered sinusoidal by assuming the high number of levels. Im is the peak of the output current The first topology was used for calculating the losses it imposes a maximum limit on power losses; other configurations will reduce the power losses and can be calculated following the same approach

CONDUCTION LOSSES

SWITCHING LOSSES

METHOD OF THD Efficiency TS Losses

CONCLUSION