Novel Reduced Switch Multilevel Inverter Suitable for Photovoltaic Application with Selective Harmonic Elimination Control

Design and application of optimized multilevel inverter (MLI) with reduced components count in different applications is the present focus among the Power electronics research community. This paper presents a novel reduced switch level doubling (RSLD) MLI. Due to the inclusion of a level doubling circuit, proposed MLI produces 4n+1 voltage levels instead of 2n+1 at the output. The design consideration is justified with performance comparison among few recently developed MLI topologies in view of switch count, source count, standing voltage, and loss. Selective harmonic elimination (SHE) technique is used to control the proposed thirteen-level RSLD MLI by determining optimal switching angles. Moreover, the objective evaluation and harmonic minimization in MLI are delineated through SHE-PWM control. MATLAB/SIMULINK platform is used for simulation of the proposed MLI under a dynamic change in modulation index as well as varying load conditions. Furthermore theoretical and simulated findings are validated experimentally by similar tests on a developed prototype of the proposed thirteen-level MLI.