A Single Stage Switched-Capacitor Hexad Boost Multilevel Inverter Featuring Boost Ability

Abstract

Nowadays, curtailment in the number of dc sources, circuit component count along with the boosting gain property of the output voltage are considered as the essential topological features for the new multilevel inverter (MLI) structures. Considering the above, a novel 13-level single-stage switched-capacitor hexad boost (S3 CHB) inverter featuring boosting gain and self-balancing ability is proposed in this paper. Each phase of the proposed \mathrm{S}^{3} CHB-MLI is designed with only 14 semiconductor switches and three electrolytic capacitors. Here, the capacitors' voltages are balanced automatically by utilizing the series-parallel technique effectively. An absence of H-bridge at the back-end makes the circuit to extend for higher levels. Capacitors' voltage ripple are analyzed in detail. Further, a cost comparison is conducted among the state-of-art MLIs to highlight the superiority of the proposed configuration. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed \mathrm{S}^{3} CHB circuit is experimentally demonstrated. Results at different load conditions are captured to prove the inductive load capability. © 2020 IEEE.