Currently, multilevel inverters have been increased the number of applications in the industrial sector and renewable energy sources. Among its characteristics, the most remarkable are modular design, high performance, and low harmonic distortion in the output voltage waveform. For this paper, a single-phase Cascade H-Bridge Multilevel Inverters (CHB-MLI or CMLI) topology with independent DC sources, has been selected for the case study. Analyzing three scenarios: 5-level, 7-level, and 9-level applying the concept of the Optimized Harmonic Stepped-Waveform (OHSW) and comparing the results between the Selective Harmonic Eliminated-Pulse Width Modulation (SHE-PWM) and the Optimal Minimization of the Total Harmonic Distortion (OMTHD) are also presented. To compare the results obtained with classical and nature-inspired optimization methods, three techniques are used to solve transcendental nonlinear equations for the problem of Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) minimization: Newton Raphson (NR), Genetic Algorithm (GA), and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), which have been widely used for the problems of THD minimization in multilevel inverters.
The cascade multilevel inverters are widely used in industrial manufacturing processes for DC-AC conversion. Therefore, the reliability and efficiency improvement, optimized control, and fault-tolerant strategies are areas of interest for researchers. The fault tolerance strategies applied to cascade multilevel inverters are classified as material redundancy and analytical redundancy. This paper presents the use of the Z-source converter as a fault reconfiguration method applied to a cascade multilevel inverter. On the one hand, the proposed approach has the characteristic of combining the use of material redundancy (modifying the output voltage by changing the Z-source operation), and on the other hand, it has the use of analytical redundancy (modifying the switching sequence of the multilevel inverter, changing from symmetrical to asymmetrical operation mode). This approach has been validated by experimental results of the system under fault-free conditions and employing the Z-source converter as the main fault reconfiguration element. The proposed fault reconfiguration strategy allows the cascaded multilevel inverter to continue to operate even in the presence of a fault by having continuous operation.
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