Minimizing switching losses in cascaded multilevel inverters by proper switching array selection

Power loss is an important parameter in multilevel inverters. In this paper, by selecting proper switching array, the switching losses of the cascaded multilevel inverters which produce more than 3 levels in each module is minimized. First, the switching loss equations are presented, and the effect of generated level in each module is studied. In order to show the procedures of the optimization, a 13-level multilevel inverter in which each module produce 7 level is considered. The fitness function is obtained and the optimization problem is solved by Genetic Algorithm. To show the performance of the proposed method, a simulation with the obtained switching arrays is conducted by MATLAB/SIMULINK and the results are presented.