Performance Analysis of a Single-phase GaN-based 3L-ANPC Inverter for Photovoltaic Applications

Abstract

Nowadays, the power electronics converter design is challenged with a request of high efficiency and compactness for various applications. To tackle this, the research community and the industry have almost fully exploited the silicon technology, leading to the development of new power transistors. The Gallium-Nitride (GaN) HEMTs can be promising power devices to replace the traditional power devices. Therefore, the performances of GaN-based converters should be assessed to validate the effectiveness in terms of efficiency and power density. Moreover, among the available converter topologies, the performance of the three-level Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) family can be enhanced with the GaN HEMTs. In light of the above, in this paper, the performance of a GaN-based three-level Active NPC (3L-ANPC) converter is evaluated in terms of power losses, volume impact of passive components, and output distortions. Simulations and experiments have been performed.