Development of a new mixed 5-level inverter for 3 kW household photovoltaic applications

Abstract

Multilevel inverters are well used in high power electronic applications (about 10 kW) because of their ability to generate a very good quality of waveforms, reducing switching frequency, and their low voltage stress across the power devices. However, inverter architecture must be modified in order to take into account the different photovoltaic (PV) problems in conventional installation. This paper presents a comparative study of 5-level Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) and a new mixed 5-level inverter. The theoretical study is validated using simulation with the LTspice environment. The output voltage and total harmonic distortion are particularly compared. An experimental 5-level inverter was realized in order to validate analytical results.