Harmonic elimination of a fifteen‐level inverter with reduced number of switches using genetic algorithm

Abstract

AbstractMultilevel inverters play a crucial role in high‐power renewable energy applications and medium voltage drives. However, existing solutions such as capacitor‐clamped and diode‐clamped multilevel inverters are not suitable for these applications due to their dependence on isolated DC sources, complex control techniques, and potential reliability issues. Here, a novel fifteen‐level inverter topology is proposed which addresses these limitations. The proposed multilevel inverters utilize a topology with reduced number of switches, which can effectively accommodate isolated DC sources. It consists of eight switches for level generation and four switches for polarity generation (H‐bridge). One of the key advantages of this topology is that it significantly reduces the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) in accordance with the IEEE 519 standards. Genetic algorithm‐based selective harmonic elimination technique was employed for THD minimization. A detailed switching loss calculation and harmonic analysis were performed to support the effectiveness of the proposed topology and the control used. The implementation of the proposed topology is simple and straightforward. Furthermore, to validate the results, insulated gate bipolar transistor based hardware model was developed. The optimized firing pulses were generated using the dSPACE 1104 controller. The results were compared with the existing recent literature and was found to address the limitations of existing topology.