A New Topology of a Single-Phase Five-Level Inverter

Leonardus Heru Pratomo

doi:10.11591/ijeei.v8i3.1766

Abstract

The power inverter technology with low harmonics content is used for many applications, such as in new and renewable energy sector. In the last decades, some researchers explored its inverter to minimize the harmonics content, and one of the solutions is a five-level inverter. A single-phase five-level inverter has a good performance in power conversion and improved performance. Nevertheless, the conventional five-level inverter topology always deals with many power semiconductor switches and a complex control algorithm. This paper, therefore, presents a new topology of a five-level inverter using four active switches.The new topology can work well as a single phase-five-level inverter with a novel Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) control algorithm using level-phase shifted carrier strategy. The new inverter has a simple power circuit and control strategy. The verification of this research is a simulation and prototype implementation, carried out in a laboratory. The results show that the proposed control strategy is capable of achieving five-level with a simple control strategy.

Highlights

In the last decades, researchers explored a single-phase inverter to achieve high performance, which results in the small harmonic content on the output side, simple control, low cost, and high efficiency
Two other disadvantages of a multilevel inverter are the fact that the small voltage stages are typically designed by isolating voltage sources or many bulk capacitors and the inherent difficulty of algorithm control [1,2,3]
The validation of the results was conducted in the laboratory through simulation and hardware tests of the proposed new five-level inverter design using a novel Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) control strategy

Summary

Introduction

Researchers explored a single-phase inverter to achieve high performance, which results in the small harmonic content on the output side, simple control, low cost, and high efficiency. Two other disadvantages of a multilevel inverter are the fact that the small voltage stages are typically designed by isolating voltage sources or many bulk capacitors and the inherent difficulty of algorithm control [1,2,3]. Due to these limitations, single-phase five-level inverters are widely studied and developed. This topology of an inverter is the same as the H-bridge inverter with the same operational function as an energy conversion from DC to AC voltage It has a better Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) output performance, even though they are less efficient due to the high number of active power semiconductor devices

Methods

Results

Conclusion