• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.319-328
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• 2020

The recent use of distributed power generation systems constructed with DC-DC converters has become extremely popular owing to the rising need for environment friendly energy generation power systems. In this study, a new single-phase five-level inverter for off-grid applications constructed with a multilevel DC-DC step-up converter is proposed to boost a low-level DC voltage (36 V-64 V) to a high-level DC bus (380 V) and invert and connect them with a single-phase 230 V rms AC load. Compared with other traditional multilevel inverters, the proposed five-level inverter has a reduced number of switching devices, can generate high-quality power with lower THD values, and has balanced voltage stress for DC capacitors. Moreover, the proposed topology does not require multiple DC sources. Finally, the performance of the proposed topology is presented through the simulation and experimental results of a 400 W hardware prototype.