A New Low Cost Five-Level Five-Switch Neutral Point Clamp Inverter With Low THD for PV Applications

Multilevel inverters have great applications nowadays as one of preferred solutions for medium and high power applications. As one of the most popular hybrid multilevel inverter topologies, the five-level active-neutral-point-clamped inverter combines the features of the conventional flying-capacitor type and Neutral-Point-Clamped (NPC) type inverter and was commercially used for industrial applications. In order to further decrease the number of active switches, this paper proposes a five-level five-switch NPC topology, which employs only five active switches and four discrete diodes. The modulation strategy for five-level five-switch NPC inverter is discussed. A 4KVA single phase prototype is simulated using the PSPICE software to verify the validity and flexibility of the proposed topology and control method.