A Multi-Input Boosting Inverter For PV Applications

This article presents the nine-level (9L) inverter based on switched-capacitor (SC) concept with inherent voltage boosting. The attractive features of the proposed inverter that, it requires low dc-link voltage due to its quadruple-boosting with reduced component count. The high-voltage gain enable it a single-stage power conversion, which leads to improved power density, efficiency and reliability of the inverter. The proposed 9L inverter is comprised of only one SC and connected in series/parallel to dc input. Hence, SC has self-voltage balancing nature, leads to devoid of dedicated voltage sensors to balance/regulate the voltage across it. Besides, the peak inverse voltage (PIV) of all used power switches is within only twice of the input dc voltage. Further, a simple logic gate based (LGB) pulse width modulation (PWM) scheme is employed to generate the gating singles of switches for 9L operation without using any dedicated control scheme. Additionally, a comprehensive comparison of proposed inverter has been done against existing 9L topologies, describes the merits and feasibility. The performance of the developed inverter is verified through PLECS based simulation.