A novel operating scheme of five-level hybrid inverters for medium voltage applications

Abstract

In this paper, a new operating scheme for five-level hybrid flying-capacitor (5L-HFC) inverters is proposed, of which structure is derived from the conventional five-level active neutral-point-clamped (5L-ANPC) topology by splitting the DC-link into three capacitors in series. In this inverter, the lower number of switching devices is required, thus its cost is reduced considerably compared with the existing five-level inverter topologies. In addition, a balancing scheme of the DC-link and flying capacitor voltages is developed. Simulation and experiment results have verified the validity of the proposed topology.