Equal Switching Distribution Method for Multi-Level Cascaded Inverters

Abstract

The paper proposes a new method of equal switching distribution that can be applied to cascaded multi-level inverters. This method is based on the fact that in the cascaded multilevel inverters, the output phase voltage is the sum of voltage waveforms produced by all cascaded cells. By periodically exchanging cells’ voltage waveforms, the proposed method ensures equal average switchings distribution between all cascaded cells. This method is applied to the 13-level inverter, which consists of three cascaded 5-level H-bridge cells per phase. However, the proposed method can be extended to any desired number of voltage levels and applied to any type of cascaded multi-level inverter. Extensive simulation results of the tested 13-level inverter with the equal switching distribution are presented. Moreover, the proposed method is compared to the standard control approaches and its advantages are shown.