Single-phase Multilevel Current Source Inverter with Reduced Device Count and Current Balancing Capability

• Main Authors: MOALLEMI KHIAVI, A., FARHADI KANGARLU, M., DAIE KOOZEHKANANI, Z., SOBHI, J., HOSSEINI, S. H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava 2015-08-01
• Series: Advances in Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Subjects: power electronics; power conversion; pulse width modulation converters; inverters; multilevel current source inverter
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.4316/AECE.2015.03016

Nowadays power converters play an important role in power system and industrial centers. One of the most important and widely used types of conversion is DC to AC conversion that is also called inverters. Generally inverters are divided to voltage source inverter (VSI) and current source inverter (CSI). From another view the inverters are divided to two-level and multilevel types. The multilevel inverters are attractive because of their good output waveform quality. However, there has been less attention to multilevel current source inverter (MLCSI) when compared with multilevel VSI. In this paper, a new topology for MLCSI is proposed. The proposed topology employs reduced number of switches to generate desired multilevel output current. The proposed MLCSI is capable of balancing the currents of the inductors that are used in the MLCSI structure. A multicarrier PWM based switching strategy is also proposed for the MLCSI. The simulation results using PSCAD/EMTDC as well as the experimental results from a single-phase 5-level CSI laboratory prototype demonstrate its validity.