Design and Implementation of a High-gain Switched-capacitor Step-up Multi-level Inverter with Reduced Components Count

Abstract

Emergence of compact design power converters for applications such as photovoltaic system, active power filter, and high-frequency AC system has introduced multi-level inverters (MLIs). In the last decade, rigorous research has been carried out to transform multi-input MLIs to single-input step-up type that will be extremely beneficial in different applications. The proposed MLI in this work is a reduced components based switched-capacitor MLI. It consists of one input source and using the capacitor voltage, it can produce a four-time step-up output. One of the capacitors is charged to magnitude the input voltage and the other two capacitors are charged to two-time the input voltage magnitude. The charging of all the capacitors is executed by utilizing them in series-parallel combination with the switching operation. By maintaining charging–discharging effectively within each cycle, the voltages are naturally balanced. A thorough comparison is carried to justify the new development in terms of reduction in number of components and voltage stress. The power loss is estimated in the proposed circuit in detail. Extensive analysis is carried out to verify the operational ability and results are provided under different scenarios such as change in modulation index, load, and supply side variations.

Keywords:

• multi-level inverter
• reduced components
• self-voltage balance
• single source
• step-up
• switched-capacitor

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Haresh Nanda

Haresh Nanda received his B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the VNR Vignanajyoti Institute of Engineering and Technology,Hyderabad, India, in 2008, the M.Tech in Power Electronics from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), Hyderabad, India, in 2013 and pursing Ph.D degree in School of Electrical and Electronics from Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, India. He is currently working as Lecturer in Electrical & Electronics Engineering in Quli QutubShah Government Polytechnic, Hyderabad. His research interest includes power electronics converters, electric drives, Switched Capacitor Multilevel Inverter, power converter applications for STATCOM.

Himanshu Sharma

Himanshu Sharma received his B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from UPTU, Lucknow, India, in 2010, the ME degree in Power Electronics & Drives from the Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Chandigarh, India, in 2013 and Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from the PEC, Chandigarh, India in 2020. He is currently working as Assistant professor in Lovely Professional University, Punjab. He has authored more than 25 technical papers published in journals, conference proceedings and book chapter. His research interest includes power electronics drives, Multilevel inverter, Z-source inverters, optimization techniques and Machine Learning algorithms.

Arvind Yadav

Arvind Yadav received his B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Himachal Pradesh University (HPU), India, in 2007, the ME degree in Power Electronics & Drives from the Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Chandigarh, India, in 2013 and Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from the GLA University, Mathura, India in 2021. He is currently in GLA University as an Assistant professor since 2013. He has authored more than 30 technical papers published in journals, conference proceedings and book chapter. His research interest includes power electronics converters, electric drives, grid integration technologies, application of power electronics in sustainable renewable energy and converters for photovoltaic system.