Self-Voltage Balanced Switched-Capacitor Seven-Level Inverter for Asymmetrical Solar PV Source Applications

In this paper, a novel structure of self-voltage balanced switched-capacitor-based seven-level inverter (SVB-SCSLI) is proposed for asymmetrical input energy source applications. SVB-SCSLI develops a seven-level staircase waveform with a minimum number of semiconductor devices compared to existing multilevel inverters (MLIs). The proposed converter is more suitable for the solar PV system where unequal DC voltage sources are available. The SVB-SCSLI also resolves the main difficulty of connecting many inverters in parallel to achieve staircase voltage. Besides, it attains voltage balancing capability at DC-link by holding constant capacitor voltage at every cycle. The detailed loss and steady-state analysis of the SVB-SCSLI are examined. Furthermore, the proposed converter's efficiency improves with better power quality than other topologies reported in the literature. Finally, a prototype is fabricated, and experimental results are presented to validate the feasibility of SVB-SCSLI.