A New Active-Neutral-Point Clamped Seven-Level Boost Inverter

This paper proposes a new active-neutral-point clamped (ANPC) seven-level boost inverter with a switched-capacitor technique. It does not require any sensors nor control circuits to control the capacitors voltage balance. A simple modulation technique is employed, which reduces the cost and the complexity of the control system design. Since the inverter has a gain of 1.5 it becomes attractive for replacing converters in applications that need an intermediate dc-boosting stage because the input voltage source has a low value, such as photovoltaic panels and full-cells systems. The operation and performance of the proposed topology are validated through simulation and experimental results.