Testing the Advanced Single Phase Asymmetric Cascaded Multilevel Inverter Topology using RES

Abstract

This paper works on developing a model of single phase asymmetrical cascaded multilevel inverter (MLI) which couples’ renewable energy sources (RES) to the electrical or electronic loads of the AC powered transport system applications (e.g., Locomotives, Vehicles). MLI is the most important device as it is the main adaptation stage between the source and the load. Researchers are now more focused on multilevel inverters because of its numerous advantages. The prime benefit of a multilevel inverter is obtaining more output voltage levels using a smaller number of DC sources. The proposed topology for this work is asymmetric and produces 31-Levels of output which consists of 12 IGBT switches and 4 isolated dc voltage supplies V dc1 , V dc2 , V dc3 and V dc4 (Ratio of 2:4:8:16). The proposed topology has been processed by using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) technique. Fundamental switching frequency (50HZ) has been used to achieve better quality of output voltage waveform with low harmonic distortion. The proposed topology has been explicitly and thoroughly analyzed throughout the study to demonstrate its superiority over alternative MLI topologies. Power loss analysis of the chosen MLI topology is also shown. An adequate comparison is also carried out between traditional and the proposed topologies. The comparative analysis shows that the chosen existing topology is better performed than others. According to the theoretical analysis conducted, the maximum efficiency obtained is 92.91% along with THD of 4.44% and TSV of 60 V dc . The accuracy of the proposed topology is verified through simulating the entire model in MATLAB-Simulink software.