Design of a Novel Five-Level Stacked Dual-Output Converter for EV Application

Abstract

This article presents a novel three-phase, five-level stacked dual output (FLSDO) converter capable of supplying a single six-phase or two three-phase loads. The proposed topology is a hybrid multilevel converter with dual flying capacitors stacked with selector switches. It has fewer switches than two conventional stacked five-level inverters to drive a six-phase load. The highlight of the proposed converter is that even with a reduced number of switches and compact size, it can produce all the output voltage states that are attainable in a conventional stacked multi-level inverter (MLI). The FLSDO converter significantly expands the operating boundary region compared to the previously proposed dual-output converters. A hybrid sinusoidal pulsewidth modulation technique is designed to operate the proposed converter, and the performance is evaluated with common and different frequencies, varying modulation indices, and phase shifts between two outputs. The FLSDO converter can be extended to supply the “n” number of loads by adding modules based on the requirement, thus making a five-level stacked multioutput converter. A laboratory prototype is developed, and its experimental outcomes align with the theoretical analysis.