Compact symmetrical and asymmetrical multilevel inverter with reduced switches

The need for a multilevel inverter for medium voltage high power applications has attracted researchers and industrialists to focus on the design of hybrid multilevel inverter topology that uses a considerably lesser number of switches and sources. This paper proposes a symmetrical and asymmetrical multilevel inverter with reduced switches. The novelty of the proposed arrangement is lesser ON state switches and reduced total blocking voltages across switches. The optional series connection of the basic unit increases output voltage levels with high-quality output voltage. There are multiple algorithms proposed by varying the DC sources to generate different voltage levels using the same configuration. A suitable comparison is presented with conventional topologies and inverters of the same structure. The proposed topology is simulated and validated on hardware setup for both 7 levels, symmetrical and 15 levels, asymmetrical is performed using dSPACE 1104 controller. The impact of change in modulation index on the power and efficiency of the proposed 15-level inverter is validated under laboratory setup. The feasibility of this topology favors renewable energy integration applications.