Multilevel Inverter Topology for Renewable Energy Grid Integration

Abstract

Abstract-In this paper, a novel three-phase parallel grid connected multilevel inverter (MLI) topology with a novel switching strategy are proposed. This Inverter is intended to feed a microgrid from renewable energy sources (RES) to overcome the problem of the polluted sinusoidal output in classical inverters and to reduce component count, particularly for generating a multilevel waveform with a large number of levels. The proposed power converter consists of n two-level (n + 1) phase inverters connected in parallel, where n is the number of RES. The more the number RES, the more the number of voltage levels, the more faithful is the output sinusoidal wave form. In the proposed topology, both voltage pulse width and height are modulated and pre-calculated by using a pulse width and height modulation (PWHM) so as to reduce the number of switching states (i.e. switching losses) and the total harmonic distortion (THD). The topology is investigated through simulations and validated experimentally with a laboratory prototype. Compliance with the IEEE 519-1992 and IEC 61000-3-12 standards is presented and an exhaustive comparison of the proposed topology is made against the classical cascaded H-bridge topology.

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“…The renewable energy-based systems usually take the foremost cascaded H-bridge type since it involves more isolated DC sources (Amamra et al, 2017) and also it eliminates fluctuation problems and the need of additional clamping diodes and flying capacitors. However, the issue with this kind is the switch count; it increases whenever the number of voltage level increases, which results in a bulky, less efficient and most expensive inverter.…”

Flexible cascaded multilevel inverter with multiple operation modes

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