Extended Multilevel Inverter Topology with Reduced Switch Count and Voltage Stress

For the applications related to the medium/high-power/voltage, Multilevel inverters (MLI) are widely accepted and commercially used. The performance of MLI compare to the conventional two-level inverters is significantly superior due to the insignificant amount of harmonic distortion, lower filter size, requirement of low voltage rating devices, lower electromagnetic interference, etc. However, there are a few disadvantages such as an increased number of components, a complex modulation and control strategy, and issues related to the voltage balancing of capacitors. The present paper proposes a new topology with a lower voltage rating component to improve the performance by remedying the mentioned disadvantages. Compared with existing inverter topologies, (especially higher levels), this topology requires fewer components, fewer dc sources, and gate drives. Further, voltage stress is also low. The overall costs and complexity are therefore greatly reduced, especially for higher voltage levels. The proposed topology has been compared with other similar topologies and the comparison proves the better structure of the proposed topology. To show the working of the proposed topology, a prototype has been developed and tested for a different operating condition with two different modulation techniques. All the results show the adequate performance of the inverter topology at the different real-time environment.