A Multilevel Inverter with Reduced Power Switches

In this paper, a new basic 15-level inverter is proposed. Based on this inverter, a new 95-level inverter and a developed multilevel inverter are proposed. In addition, a new algorithm to determine the magnitude of dc voltage source of the basic unit is introduced. The proposed inverter is able to generate maximum number of output levels by using minimum number of power switches, driver circuits, IGBTs, power diodes and dc voltage sources. These advantages lead to decrease complexity, installation space and total cost of the inverter. These results are obtained by comparing the proposed inverter with several conventional multilevel inverters that have been presented in the literature. These comparisons are done in design of two multilevel inverters with minimum 15 levels and 95 levels at the output. Finally, the accuracy performance of the proposed inverter to generate all positive and negative levels at the output is reconfirmed through the experimental results on a 15-level inverter.