A Multilevel Inverter Topology with Reduced Switches

Due to unavailability, scarcity, and environmental effects of non-renewable conventional source it has become almost necessary to shift energy needs increasingly towards renewable sources. Renewable sources like solar and wind not only provide pollution free energy but are also freely available in vast amount. One on the most popular forms of renewable energy is the solar energy. Photovoltaic systems are used to convert the solar energy into electrical energy that can be stored in batteries. As batteries provide DC voltage inverters are needed to convert the Direct Current from batteries into Alternating Current because most of our everyday loads are AC in nature. This paper presents a new multi-level inverter topology for this purpose. Multi-level inverters are most suitable for medium to high power inverters. Multi-level inverters have advantage over square wave inverters and Quasi square wave inverters because they can produce AC voltages with low harmonic distortion, also smaller DC voltage sources can be used in a cascade form to produce high voltage AC output. The topology introduced in this paper is for a 5-level inverter. The benefit of this topology is that it uses fewer number of switches than conventional multi-level inverter typologies.