Voltage-sharing converter to supply single-phase asymmetrical four-level diode-clamped inverter with high power factor loads

The output voltage quality of some of the single-phase multilevel inverters can be improved when their dc-link voltages are regulated asymmetrically. Symmetrical and asymmetrical multilevel diode-clamped inverters have the problem of dc-link capacitor voltage balancing, especially when power factor of the load is close to unity. In this paper, a new single-inductor multi-output dc/dc converter is proposed that can control the dc-link voltages of a single-phase diode-clamped inverter asymmetrically to achieve voltage quality enhancement. The circuit of the presented converter is explained and the main equations are developed. A control strategy is proposed and explained in details. To validate the versatility of the proposed combination of the suggested dc-dc converter and the asymmetrical four-level diode-clamped inverter (ADCI), simulations and experiments have been directed. It is concluded that the proposed combination of introduced multioutput dc-dc converter and single-phase ADCI is a good candidate for power conversion in residential photovoltaic (PV) utilization.