Analysis and Implementation of Switched Capacitor-based Multi-Level Inverter for Electric Vehicles Applications

Significant interest has been shown in switched capacitor (SC)-based multi-level inverters (MLIs), which decrease the need for a DC supply and enhance power quality. The common issues with SC-MLIs include an uneven distribution of conducting paths, increased voltage drop across capacitors, the sum of all inverter DC link voltages across the highest voltage rated switches, and a higher total standing voltage (TSV). The purpose of this paper is to create a SC-MLI with less components in order to maintain a constant voltage across the capacitors, to obtain higher voltage gain with fewer parts, fewer conducting routes, lower TSV, and to create a more affordable and effective inverter. The structure of the MLI is created by a cascade interconnection between the number of SC cells. A single input multiple output (SIMO) converter boosts the DC-link voltage over the stable DC voltage of the solar panels using a modified perturb and observe (P&O) method. Additionally, fewer switches in the conduction path and 50 % of the switches operating at normal frequency guarantee a decrease in an overall loss of power in the proposed network. The benefits of the recommended MLI are made clear by comparing them with 17-level MLIs in terms of the number of elements, stress, gain, and cost factor. Detailed experimental results are shown under various transient conditions to show that the 17-level prototype is operationally viable. The total harmonic distortion (THD) is found to be identical and is less than 5 %, which meets IEEE standards.