Performance Analysis of 13 Level Multilevel Inverter for PV Application

Abstract: Solar power generation is an emerging trend in renewable sources of electricity. A Photovoltaic (PV) system is a system composes one or more solar panels combined with an inverter, other electrical and mechanical hardware which use energy from the Sun to generate electricity. The inverter proposed in this topology is a 13-level multilevel inverter has two DC sources making it an asymmetric multilevel inverter. The DC output from PV module is tracked to maximum power using a MPPT and conditioned through boost converter. This new configuration of asymmetrical multilevel inverters uses capacitors as the DC links to create the levels for staircase waveforms and makes a reduction in DC sources. Hence making it is possible to generate 13 levels with lower and unequal DC sources (2VDC and 1VDC). 13 level multilevel inverter has two chargeable capacitors and 14 semiconductor switches. The capacitors are self-charging without any extra circuit. Hence the lower number of components makes it to use in wide range of applications. Main attraction of this multilevel inverter is the creation of the negative voltage levels without any additional circuit (such as H-bridge circuit). The implementing system will be validated with MATLAB/ Simulink and hardware.

Keywords: Photo Voltaic (PV), Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), Perturb and Observe (P&O), Boost converter, 13Level Multilevel Inverter.