Five-Level Hybrid Voltage Source Inverters

Multilevel inverters are attractive solutions for medium-voltage and high-power applications. Topologies with five steps can produce better quality voltage output than the conventional ones with three steps. This paper presents a simple methodology to systematically derive five-level hybrid voltage source converters. Among the six topologies obtained, two are novelties. A brief analysis and a comparative study show that at least one of the new topologies has acceptable performance in terms of losses, thermal stress, and voltage stress.