• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.532-541
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• 2016

A single-phase asymmetrical cascaded multilevel inverter is introduced with the goal of increasing power quality with the reduction of power in insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) switches. In the present work, the proposed inverter topology is analyzed and generalized with respect to different proposed algorithms for choosing different voltage source values. To prove the advantages of the proposed inverter, a case study involving a 17-level inverter is conducted. The simulation and experimental results with reduced THD are also presented and compared with the MATLAB/SIMULINK simulation results. Finally, the proposed topology is compared with different multilevel inverter topologies available in the literature in terms of the number of IGBT switches required with respect to the number of levels generated in the output of inverter topologies.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.1504-1512
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• 2016

This paper presents a new single-phase asymmetrical cascaded multilevel DC-link inverter. The proposed inverter comprises two stages. The main stage of the inverter consists of multiple similar cells, each of which is a half-bridge inverter consisting of two switches and a single DC source. All cells are connected in a cascaded manner with a fixed neutral point. The DC source values are not made equal to increase the performance of the inverter. The second circuit is a folded cascaded H-bridge circuit operating at a line frequency. One of the main advantages of this proposed topology is that it is a modular type and can thus be extended to high stages without changing the configuration of the main stage circuit. Two control schemes, namely, low switching with selective harmonic elimination and sinusoidal pulse width modulation, are employed to validate the proposed topology. The detailed approach of each control scheme and switching pulses are discussed in detail. A 150W prototype of the proposed system is implemented in the laboratory to verify the validity of the proposed topology.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.451-462
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• 2016

Photovoltaic energy conversion becomes main focus of many researches due to its promising potential as source for future electricity and has many advantages than the other alternative energy sources like wind, solar, ocean, biomass, geothermal etc. In Photovoltaic power generation multilevel inverters play a vital role in power conversion. The three different topologies, diode-clamped (neutral-point clamped) inverter, capacitor-clamped (flying capacitor) inverter and cascaded h-bridge multilevel inverter are widely used in these multilevel inverters. Among the three topologies, cascaded h-bridge multilevel inverter is more suitable for photovoltaic applications since each pv array can act as a separate dc source for each h-bridge module. This paper presents a single phase Cascaded H-bridge five level inverter for grid-connected photovoltaic application using sinusoidal pulse width modulation technique. This inverter output voltage waveform reduces the harmonics in the generated current and the filtering effort at the input. The control strategy allows the independent control of each dc-link voltages and tracks the maximum power point of PV strings. This topology can inject to the grid sinusoidal input currents with unity power factor and achieves low harmonic distortion. A PID control algorithm is implemented in Arm Processor LPC2148. The validity of the proposed inverter is verified through simulation and is implemented in a single phase 100W prototype. The results of hardware are compared with simulation results. The proposed system offers improved performance over conventional three level inverter in terms of THD.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1998.07f
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• pp.1925-1927
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• 1998

D-STATCON using the multilevel voltage source inverters is presented for voltage regulation and reactive power compensation in distribution system. This cascade M-level inverter consists of (M-1)/2 single phase full bridge inverter(FBI). This multilevel inverter is a natural fit to the flexible ac transmission systems(FACTS) including STATCON, SVC, series compensation and phase shifting, It can solve the problems of conventional transformer-based multipulse inverters and multilevel diode-clamped inverters. From the simulation results, the superiority of D-STATCON with cascade multilevel inverter is shown for high power application.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.507-518
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• 2014

This paper presents a new cascaded asymmetrical single phase multilevel converter with a lower number of power semiconductor switches and isolated DC sources. Therefore, the number of power electronic devices, converter losses, size, and cost are reduced. The proposed multilevel converter topology consists of two H-bridges connected in cascaded configuration. One H-bridge operates at a high frequency (high frequency inverter) and is capable of developing a two level output while the other H-bridge operates at the fundamental frequency (low frequency inverter) and is capable of developing a multilevel output. The addition of each power electronic switch to the low frequency inverter increases the number of levels by four. This paper also introduces a hybrid switching algorithm which uses very simple arithmetic and logical operations. The simplified hybrid switching algorithm is generalized for any number of levels. The proposed simplified switching algorithm is developed using a TMS320F2812 DSP board. The operation and performance of the proposed multilevel converter are verified by simulations using MATLAB/SIMULINK and experimental results.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers B
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• v.55 no.8
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• pp.430-435
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• 2006

This paper presents a method about the efficiency analysis and the harmonic reduction of single phase NPC multi-level inverter with LC-trap filter and LCR output filter. The proposed LC-trap filter is comprised of a conventional LC output filter, by using LC-trap filter the need for high damping resistor and low LC cut-off frequency is eliminated. Also, low damping resistor is increased the efficiency of the output filter. Experimental verification of the proposed circuit is provided with single phase NPC multilevel inverter system and DSP controller.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.811-818
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• 2011

Modulation strategies for multilevel inverters have typically focused on synthesizing a desired set of sinusoidal voltage waveforms using a fixed number of dc voltage sources. This makes the average power drawn from different dc voltage sources unequal and time varying. Therefore, the dc voltage sources are unregulated and require that corrective control action be incorporated. In this paper, first two new selections are proposed for determining the dc voltage sources values for asymmetric cascaded multilevel inverters. Then two modulation strategies are proposed for the dc power balancing of these types of multilevel inverters. Using the charge balance control methods, the power drawn from all of the dc sources are balanced except for the dc source used in the first H-bridge. The proposed control methods are validated by simulation and experimental results on a single-phase 21-level inverter.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.548-558
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• 2012

In this paper, a novel offset-based single-state pulse width modulation (PWM) method for achieving zero common-mode voltage (CMV) and reducing switching losses in multilevel inverters is presented. The specific active switching state of the zero common-mode (ZCM) voltage that approximates the reference voltage can be deduced from the switching state sequence of the reduced CMV phase disposition PWM (CMV PD PWM) method. From the reference leg voltages for the zero common-mode voltage, an N-to-2-level transformation defines a virtual two-level inverter and the corresponding nominal leg voltage references. The commutation process of the reduced CMV PD PWM method in a multilevel inverter and its outputs can be simply followed in a nominal switching time diagram for the virtual inverter. The characteristics of the reduced CMV PD PWM and the single-state PWM for zero common-mode voltage are analyzed in detail in this paper. The theoretical analysis of the proposed PWM method is verified by experimental results.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.2099-2108
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• 2016

The cascaded multilevel converter is widely adopted to medium/high voltage and high power electronic applications due to the small harmonic components of the output voltage and the facilitation of modularity. In this paper, the operation principle of a T-type H-bridge topology is investigated in detail, and a carrier phase shifted pulse width modulation (CPS-PWM) based control method is proposed for this topology. Taking a virtual five-level waveform achieved by a unipolar double frequency CPS-PWM as the output object, PWM signals of the T-type H-bridge can be obtained by reverse derivation according to its switching modes. In addition, a control method for the T-type H-bridge based cascaded multilevel converter is introduced. Then a single-phase T-type H-bridge cascaded multilevel static var generator (SVG) prototype is built, and a repetitive controller based compound current control strategy is designed with the DC-link voltage balancing control scheme analyzed. Finally, simulation and experimental results validate the correctness and feasibility of the proposed modulation method and control strategy for T-type H-bridge based cascaded multilevel converters.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.64 no.5
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• pp.718-725
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• 2015

This paper proposes a novel level-shifted PWM (LS-PWM) strategy for fault tolerant cascaded multilevel inverter. Most proposed fault-tolerant operation methods in many of studies are based on a phase-shifted PWM (PS-PWM) method. To apply these methods to multilevel inverter systems using LS-PWM, two additional steps will be implemented. During the occurrence of a single-inverter-cell fault, the carrier bands scheme is reconfigured and modulation levels of inverter cells are reassigned in this proposed fault-tolerant operation. The proposed strategy performs balanced three-phase line-to-line voltages and line currents when a switching device fault occurs in a cascaded multilevel inverter using LS-PWM. Simulation and experimental results are included in the paper to verify the proposed method.