Direct Predictive Current Control of a New Five-Level Voltage Source Inverter

This article proposes a direct predictive current control approach to regulate the flying capacitor voltages along with the output currents in a new five-level voltage source inverter under a wide range of output frequencies and load power factors. Also, the proposed approach maintains the flying capacitor voltage ripples well below the desired limits (10%–15%) throughout the operating range. The sampled data model of a new five-level voltage source inverter is developed to predict the future behavior of the control variables such as output current, and flying capacitor voltage and its ripples. A three-objective cost function with reference and predicted control variables is formulated. The cost function is evaluated for all possible switching states, then an optimum switching state which gives the low cost value is selected. The optimum switching state is applied to the converter in one sampling interval. The feasibility of the proposed control method is verified on a new five-level voltage source inverter by using MATLAB/Simulink simulations and experimental studies on a scaled-down laboratory prototype with dSPACE Microlab Box. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed approach is analyzed in terms of voltage and current harmonic distortion, and flying capacitor voltage ripples at different current magnitudes, output frequencies, and load power factors.