Control strategy applied on double flying capacitor multi-cell inverter for increasing number of generated voltage levels

A 15-level flying capacitor multi-cell based inverter with new control method is proposed. The main benefit of this topology is minimising the number of components (switches, insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBTs), diodes, flying capacitors and DC sources with minimum variety number) that are used for producing the same number of output voltage levels. The proposed novel control strategy is capable of regulating voltage of flying capacitors on desired values, which results in increased number of output voltage levels. Another feature of the proposed control strategy is robustness against the load changes. Moreover, a new algorithm is presented for determining the voltage rating of flying capacitors. Simulations carried out in PSCAD/EMTDC software package and the experimental data were validated against numerical results.