A single-phase multilevel inverter topology to synthesize multiple number of levels using common number of switches

Abstract

In last two decays increasing demand of connecting natural sources of energy to the power grid, applications of Multilevel inverters (MLI's) have been increased for medium and high power DC to AC conversion. The component count always a challenge with increase in number of levels. This paper presents a MLI topology with less number of switches for generation of high level AC output voltage. This topology is able to synthesize 3-level output waveform by using single DC source, 5-level and 7-level waveform by using six switches and two DC sources. A multilevel single carrier modulation technique is also proposed in this paper. Modes of operation is explained and concept is validated with experimental results.