Comparative Study of NPC and Cascaded Converters Topologies

Abstract

Multilevel converters have many advantages which are the capacity to generate a very good quality of waveforms, the reduced switching frequency, the low energy loss and the low effort on power devices. They are used in different power electronic applications including statics synchronous compensators (STATCOM). This paper presents a comparative study of Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) and H-bridge cascaded converters. A theoretical analysis of NPC and cascaded multilevel is presented. The generalized study for N levels converters topologies is derived. The theoretical study is validated using computer simulation in Matlab/Simulink/SimpowerSystems environment. Output voltage and total harmonic distortion are compared.