Design and Performance Analysis of a Single Phase PWM Inverter

Power Electronic equipment that converts a DC power into AC power at required voltage and frequency level is known as Inverter. Voltage Source inverters produce an output voltage or current with levels either zero to positive voltage or zero to negative voltage that means two levels. These bi-level inverters are powered by different type of gating signals like square, quasi square and sinusoidal Pulse width modulated signals. Different gating signals result in different harmonic levels in the output signal. In this paper, a hardware prototype of a single phase inverter using MOSFETs as the power switches has been developed. The MOSFETs are driven by square and quasi-square gating signals. These gating signals have been generated by designing the driver circuit using a MOSFET driver IC. In order to maintain the voltage level, the conduction time interval of MOSFETs has been maintained by controlling the pulse width of the gating pulses. Performance of the inverter has been studied for resistive load. Simulation has been done in SIMULINK, results of simulation and experimental model has been compared on the basis of various parameters like output voltage, load current and THD levels.