Comparison of Switching Angle Arrangement Techniques in Single-Phase Boost Multilevel Inverter for Low-THD Operation

Abstract

Multilevel inverters are one of the preferred inverter choices for solar photovoltaic (PV) applications. While these inverters are capable of producing AC staircase output voltage waveform, the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output voltage waveform can become worse if the switching angle of each voltage level is not carefully chosen. In this paper, four switching angle arrangement techniques are presented and the switching angles generated by these techniques are applied to a new single-phase boost multilevel (SPBM) inverter. The performance of 3-, 5-, 7-, 9-and 11-level SPBM inverter having four different sets of switching angles derived using the aforementioned techniques have been evaluated and compared using PSIM software. Simulation results show that one of the techniques is able to produce an output voltage waveform with the lowest THD, whilst the other generates an output voltage waveform with the highest fundamental voltage component.