Switched-Capacitor-Based Three-Phase Five-Level Inverter Topology with Reduced Components

Abstract

This paper presents a new five-level multilevel inverter (MLI) based on retrofitting of the conventional two-level (2L) three-phase inverter modules with minimum structural reconfigurations for low-voltage and high-power-quality demanding applications. It comprises two such inverter modules connected in series with 2L switched-capacitor units (SCUs). It requires only two isolated dc sources which are shared by all inverter output phases and thus eliminates the chances of output phase unbalance. Further, the voltage across the floating capacitors of the SCUs are naturally regulated without any sensors, thus makes the proposed topology more elegant for industrial applications. Further, an extensive comparison with the recent other MLI topologies attests the reduced requirement of the components in devising the proposed topology. Finally, experimental results from a low-power hardware prototype are presented to validate the feasibility of the proposed configuration. © 2018 IEEE.