Investigation of efficient multilevel inverter for photovoltaic energy system and electric vehicle applications

Abstract

Introduction. This research presents a simple single-phase pulse-width modulated 7-level inverter topology for renewable system which allows home-grid applications with electric vehicle charging. Although multilevel inverters have appealing qualities, their vast range of application is limited by the use of more switches in the traditional arrangement. As a result, a novel symmetrical 7-level inverter is proposed, which has the fewest number of unidirectional switches with gate circuits, providing the lowest switching losses, conduction losses, total harmonic distortion and higher efficiency than conventional topology. The novelty of the proposed work consists of a novel modular inverter structure for photovoltaic energy system and electric vehicle applications with fewer numbers of switches and compact in size. Purpose. The proposed system aims to reduce switch count, overall harmonic distortions, and power loss. There are no passive filters required, and the constituted optimizes power quality by producing distortion-free sinusoidal output voltage as the level count increases while reducing power losses. Methods. The proposed topology is implemented with MATLAB/Simulink, using gating pulses and various pulse-width modulation methodologies. Moreover, the proposed model also has been validated and compared to the hardware system. Results. Total harmonic distortion, number of power switches, output voltage, current, power losses and number of DC sources are investigated with conventional topology. Practical value. The proposed topology has proven to be extremely beneficial for implementing photovoltaic-based stand-alone multilevel inverter and electric vehicle charging applications.