A Modified Symmetric and Asymmetric Multilevel Power Inverter with Reduced Number of Power Switches Controlled by MPC

The development of renewable energy power generation is expanding day by day. To harness this energy efficiently and convert it to usable form at higher quality, high efficient and reliable power electronics devices are required. Multilevel inverters are effectively used to produce sinusoidal waveforms at lower filter size. They offer low voltage stress as well as lower harmonic distortion. However, conventional multilevel inverters have some disadvantages such as bigger size, higher number of components (switches and sources) and gate drivers, and higher control complexity. To overcome these disadvantages, this paper presents a modified symmetrical and asymmetrical multilevel DC-link inverter (MLDCLI) topology with lower number of power switches and gate drivers. In addition, a Finite Control Set Model Predictive Control (FCS-MPC) has been presented and used to drive the grid connected modified MLDCLI. The performance of the modified topology with FCS-MPC has been verified by simulation and experimentally. Seven level symmetrical multilevel converter has been tested using dSPACE 1007.