Single and Double Input DC Sources Multilevel Inverter Topologies With Reduced Components Counts and Voltage Boosting Property for Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Converters

Abstract

This article proposes a single-source nine-level multilevel inverter topology that handles a reduced number of components. Moreover, it utilizes the virtual dc sources in terms of the switched capacitors to reduce the number of the active dc source. Those capacitors have a self-charging with naturally balancing capability. The proposed topology can be upgraded to a 19-level configuration. This modification is performed by adding a single supply and a pair of switches. To highlight the good features of the proposed structures, a set of comparative studies are held with other structures based on some of the performance evaluating parameters. The comparison results prove the superiority of the proposed configurations over the other comparative references. A simple method is presented to estimate the boundary for the capacitance of capacitors. The performance of the proposed configurations is validated through the practical prototypes for these structures, which are implemented and tested based on the dSPACE (DS-1103) hardware. For further validation, the proposed topology is integrated with a photovoltaic (PV) system to study its performance with a high output power system.