Reduced Auxiliary Circuit Switch Nine-Level Inverter for Renewable Energy Applications

Abstract

Multilevel Inverters (MLI) created a milestone due to increasing demand in high power medium voltage applications. To decrease the harmonics content and stress across power semiconductor devices, multilevel inverters are used. In this paper, a nine-level inverter is presented with a auxiliary circuit that requires a minimum number of power devices compared to the traditional MLI topologies. The suggested nine-level inverter's control circuitry is controlled by an ATmega8 microcontroller in this study. Opto-isolators with galvanic isolation supply the triggering pulses to operate switches. A nine-level inverter to power 100 W load is implemented using two proposed auxiliary circuits for renewable energy applications. The presented nine-level inverter's control switches are driven using a DC level shifting method. The suggested inverter's functionality and feasibility are confirmed by the experimental and simulation findings.

KEYWORDS:

• ATmega8
• Cascaded multilevel inverter
• DC level shifting
• Galvanic isolation
• Nine-level
• Renewable
• Semiconductor devices

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruchi Pachagade

Ruchi M Pachagade received the bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Bapurao Deshmukh College of Engineering, Sevagram, Nagpur University in 2013 and Master's degree in electrical drives & control from Marathwada Institute of Technology Aurangabad, BAMU University in 2017. She was an assistant professor and research coordinator with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Jagadambha College of Engineering Yavatmal from 2017 to 2018. She has published scientific papers in the field of power electronics, with multilevel Inverters with its various modulation techniques. She has authored five scientific papers and received the Best Paper Research Paper Awards at ETAEERE'16 sponsored Lecture note in Electrical Engineering, Springer book series. She is a reviewer member of various international conferences.

Pandav Kiran Maroti

Pandav Kiran Maroti received the Bachelor's degree in electronics and telecommunication from Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad, India, in 2011, and the MTech degree in power electronics and drives from the Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India, in 2014. He is currently pursuing the PhD degree in University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He was an assistant professor with the Marathwada Institute of Technology, Aurangabad, from 2014 to 2016. He is currently a visiting researcher with Qatar University. He has published scientific papers in the field of power electronics (multilevel dc/dc and dc/ac converter and multi-phase open winding inverter). He is also a professional active member of the Industrial Electronics, Power Electronics, Industrial Application, and the Young Professionals societies. He is also an active reviewer member of various reputed international conferences and journals, including IEEE and IET. He received the Best Paper Award from ETAEERE, in 2016, sponsored Lecture notes in Electrical Engineering, Springer book series. Email: [email protected]

M. S. Bhaskar

M S Bhaskar received the Bachelor's degree in electronics and telecom. engineering from the University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India in 2011 and a Master's degree in power electronics and drives from the Vellore Institute of Technology, VIT University, India in 2014, and PhD in electrical and electronic engineering, University of Johannesburg, South Africa in 2019. He is with Renewable Energy Lab, Department of Communications and Networks Engineering, College of Engineering, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Esbjerg, Denmark in 2019. He has authored 150 plus scientific papers concerning DC/DC and DC/AC converter and high gain converter and received the Best Paper Research Paper Awards from IEEE-GPECOM'20, IEEE-CENCON'19, IEEE-ICCPCT'14, IET-CEAT'16. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, IEEE Industrial Electronics, Power Electronics, Industrial Application, and Power and Energy, Robotics and Automation, Vehicular Technology Societies, Young Professionals, various IEEE Councils, and Technical Communities. He is a reviewer member of various international journals and conferences, including IEEE and IET. He received the IEEE ACCESS award “Reviewer of Month” in Jan 2019 for his valuable and thorough feedback on manuscripts and his quick turnaround on reviews. He is the Associate Editor of IET Power Electronics and Topic Editor of MDPI Electronics, Switzerland. Email: [email protected]