H-Type Five-Level Current Source Inverter

Conventional five-level current source inverters (CSIs) suffer from current imbalance issues, necessitating complex balancing schemes. The emerging five-level CSIs, such as X-type and Gamma-type CSIs, can achieve inherent current balance, thereby eliminating the need for additional balancing schemes. However, they require the use of large dc inductors, resulting in large size and weight, high cost, and low efficiency. To address this challenge, an H-type five-level CSI is proposed in this work. It retains inherent current balancing while simultaneously achieving minimized dc inductors throughout its full operating range. Its performance is validated through laboratory-scale experiments.