New Three-Phase Multilevel Inverter with Shared Power Switches

Abstract

Despite the advantages offered by multilevel inverters, one of the main drawbacks that prevents their widespread use is their circuit complexity as the number of power switches employed is usually high. This paper presents a new multilevel inverter topology with a considerable reduction in the number of power switches used through the switch-sharing approach. The fact that the proposed inverter applies two bidirectional power switches for sharing among the three phases does not prevent it from producing seven levels in the line-to-line output voltage waveforms. A modified scheme of space vector modulation via the application of virtual voltage vectors is developed to generate the PWM signals of the power switches. The performance of the proposed inverter is investigated through MATLAB/SIMULINK simulations and is practically tested using a laboratory prototype with a DSP-based modulator. The results demonstrate the satisfactory performance of the inverter and verify the effectiveness of the modulation method.

Optimised inverter by switch sharing: a control solution for photovoltaic applications

“…By using the modified space vector pulse width modulation technique proposed in [11], the appropriate switching signals can be generated.…”

“…The selection of V target can be made within a range between 0 and 100%, in which 100% refers to the highest reference voltage vector amplitude allowed before overmodulation occurs. According to [11], it is observed that a reference voltage vector of amplitude 70% and higher produces good THD and harmonic spectrum for the four-level switch-sharing-based inverter.…”

A Novel Multilevel DC-Link Three-Phase T-Type Inverter

“…Various modulation techniques [7][8][9][10] and power electronic component technologies [11][12][13][14] are needed to achieve the desired output stepped waveforms. Various types of switches have been constructed and validated in [15,16] for different types of inverters for the purpose of increasing the reliability of the inverters such as to reduce the total count of passive components and to obtain the desired stepped output waveforms [17][18][19].…”

A Flexible Rung Ladder Structured Multilevel Inverter

“…Additionally, formulaic steps to compute the SDC values have been suggested. A switch sharing strategy has been the crux tenet in the suggestion given by Hew Wooi Ping et al [20]. It has been demonstrated successfully that a considerable reduction in switch count is possible in the switch sharing.…”