An improved fault tolerant single phase five-level multilevel inverter

ABSTRACT

Despite the numerous advantages of multilevel inverters over two-level inverter, their main limitation is the increase in component count as the level increases. The increase in component count and high failure rate of power semiconductor switches and capacitors tend to reduce the reliability of multilevel inverters. Thus, the ability of multilevel inverter to tolerate faults is an important factor to consider when choosing a multilevel inverter topology for safety-critical applications. In this regard, the current study presents a new single-source five-level fault-tolerant inverter based on switched capacitor with self-balancing capability. In the proposed inverter, the fault tolerance is achieved with the help of redundant legs. A simple fault reconfiguration strategy is proposed in the present study for the proposed inverter which can retain the number of levels in the output, power handling capacity and self-balancing of switched capacitor in the event of any single switch fault and the most of multi-switch fault scenarios. The simulation study and experimental results validate the suggested inverter’s fault tolerant capability under various fault scenarios. A comprehensive and detailed comparison study demonstrates the proposed fault resilient inverter’s superiority over the recently proposed fault tolerant multilevel inverter available in the literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Fault Tolerance
• Multilevel inverter
• Self-balancing of switched capacitor
• single switch and multiple switch fault tolerance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).