Low Switching Frequency Operation of PEC9 Multilevel Inverter Using Modified SHM-PWM
Mohammad Sharifzadeh, Mohammad Babaie, Fadia Sebaaly, Majid Mehrasa, Gabriel Chouinard, Kamal Al‐Haddad
Abstract
Compact Multilevel Converters (CMCs) are type of converter topology where both DC sources and AC loads are clamped by active switches and the load current directly passes though DC sources. The H-bridge has been emerged as the first generation of CMCs, but later H-bridge has been developed as Packed U-Cell (PUC) using auxiliary DC capacitors instead of extra DC sources and optimizing number of components. Recently, an advanced CMC based on the PUC has been introduced so-called as Packed E-Cell (PEC) which is further optimized compared to PUC topology. The main challenge in CMCs including PEC is to balance the auxiliary DC capacitors in a low switching frequency technique. In this paper, DC capacitor voltage balancing of PEC is investigated at a low switching frequency operation using Selective Harmonic Mitigation (SHM) modulation technique. Some theoretical and simulation analyses have been performed to evaluate the performance of PEC under low switching frequency operation.