Abstract:
Multilevel inverter (MLI) plays a strong role in
low power photovoltaic (PV) applications to transfer
large amount of high quality power. It offers less
distortion and can be used in high power, medium voltage
applications. The objective of this paper is to propose a
photovoltaic based new multilevel inverter topology with
reduced number of switches and voltage sources. The
proposed inverter consists of two units namely basic unit
which produces unidirectional output voltage and
polarity changing unit which helps to change the polarity
of the output voltage. The basic unit of the proposed
inverter topology produces five level output voltage
waveform during symmetric operation and nine level
output voltage waveform during asymmetric operation.
This topology can be extended with multiple dc sources to
synthesize large output levels. The advantage of this
topology is it uses minimum number of components and
hence the cost and size of the inverter is reduced. In this
paper, the dc source for the proposed inverter topology is
modelled as a PV array. A mathematical model for the PV
array is developed and implemented with the proposed
multilevel inverter topology. The proposed inverter is
simulated using MATLAB/Simulink software. The
simulation results for different output levels are analysed
and presented.
