Quadruple Boost Switched Capacitor-Based Inverter for Standalone Applications

Abstract

Conventional energy sources will not be sufficient to meet future electrical demands, and also pollute the environment. Therefore, to meet their electrical energy needs, and maintain clean and green environmental conditions, people are focusing more on renewable energy sources. Small-scale PV solar standalone AC loads or grid integration applications need high voltage at a desired level, transformer/inductor less operation, high gain DC-DC front-end converters, and DC-AC converters. To achieve all the above objectives, this paper proposes a step-up quadruple boost nine-level inverter, it works on switched capacitor technique with a reduced count of components for the application of renewable energy systems. The proposed topology balances the capacitor voltages with the control scheme itself without using any sensors. A levelshifted pulse-width modulation (LPWM) technique can be used in the control strategy of the proposed topology. This paper covers the operational modes of the proposed topology, voltage stress calculations, capacitors calculations, and losses calculations at various stages and compared with recent literature, that reveals this topology is more advantageous in terms of less total standing voltage, switch count, cost factor, better efficiency and the number of gate driver circuits. The theoretical performance can be validated through MATLAB/Simulink-based simulation and their results are validated through prototype experimentation. Further, the experimental results contain modulation index variations, frequency modulation, switching frequency variations, input voltage variations, and load variations. Finally, the max efficiency of 96.5% is achieved for the experimental prototype of the proposed topology.INDEX TERMS Switched Capacitor (SC) based Inverter, High Gain inverter topologies, solar PV, self-voltage balance and Level Shifted Pulse Width Modulation (LSPWM).