Affiliation:
1. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Tehran North Branch Islamic Azad University Tehran Iran
2. Managing Director Engineering Institute of Technology WA Australia
3. Managing Director Smart Energy Solutions Group Sydney New South Wales Australia
4. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Tabriz University Tabriz Iran
5. Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering Drexel University Philadelphia USA
Abstract
AbstractThis study proposes a modular multilevel inverter for low‐voltage applications, including ac‐coupled renewables and energy storage systems. These inverters require many switches and gate drivers in their structures, which complicates the control system, reduces efficiency, and increases costs. This study introduces a new modular multilevel inverter that can produce five levels of positive voltage using only six power switches and five DC voltage sources. The basic unit is composed of a single‐ and double‐source (SDS) unit. SDS reduces the number of power electronic components, such as the insulated gate bipolar transistors, freewheeling diodes, gate driver circuits, dc voltage sources, and blocking voltage by switches. The proposed topology can boost the number of output voltage levels and decrease the number of switching devices and voltage stress using some combinations of basic submodules. The performance of the proposed 11‐level single‐phase inverter is compared with that of the conventional structures and recent symmetric topologies considering the number of switches, cost, and efficiency. The waveform quality and both the voltage and current harmonic characteristics were determined in accordance with IEEE 519–2014. Finally, an 11‐level prototype was constructed to validate the theoretical analysis, feasibility, and effectiveness of the proposed inverter.
Publisher
Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
Subject
Electrical and Electronic Engineering