Efficient Multilevel Inverter for Distributed Generation System

Abstract

Inverters have become inevitable part of power system with many useful applications. The proposed multilevel inverter in this research is a specialized equipment deployed in Distributed Generation (DG) integrated with National Grid. Distributed generation requires inverters for energy flow between DC source and grid. Keeping in view the importance of inverters an effective inverter with multi stages has been proposed which will not only perform its energy flow duty from DC source to load but also reduce the signal pollution in terms of harmonics. This paper further highlights the application of inverters in various generation sources such as fuel and Photovoltaic (PV) cells. Main focus of this research is on improving the efficiency and quality of output voltage waveform which may contain severe harmonics from DG sources. Multilevel inverter is one of the most modern emerged and popular type of invention utilized in alternative high power applications. Selective harmonic elimination stepped waveform (SHESW) method is utilized to snub prominent lower order harmonics from resulting waveform. This research particularly compares various multilevel inverters and highlights the suitability of three phase eleven-level inverter for proposed DG system. Results show successful operation and effective mitigation of harmonics reported from DG system for the improvement of power quality. Moreover, results highlight the feasibility of the fundamental frequency switching application in three-phase eleven level Cascaded Multi Level Inverter (CMLI).