A comprehensive study of classical and hybrid multilevel inverter topologies for renewable energy applications

Over the last few decades, multilevel inverters (MLIs) are being extensively utilized in many industrial and grid connected applications due to their numerous merits. With the recent development of renewable energy systems (RES), applications of classical MLI topologies are hindered due to their performance issues such as poor power quality, uneconomical structure and low efficiency. These performance issues and limitations in classical MLI topologies have attracted the researchers toward evolving new hybrid MLI topologies. In this article, a comprehensive analysis of these recent hybrid MLI topologies is done on the basis of some qualitative and quantitative performance indices. Special focus has been given to extensively review the influence of MLIs in grid connected renewable energy applications such as photovoltaic (PV) systems, wind energy conversion systems (WECS) and micro-grid. In order to provide the better insight about the working and performance of these MLI topologies, simulation results performed in MATLAB/Simulink environment are also presented.