A High Performance Switched-Capacitor Based Single-Phase Transformerless Inverter

This paper presents a new circuit structure of five-level switched-capacitor (SC) based transformerless inverter which is ideal for grid-integrated photovoltaic (PV) applications. The main objective of the proposed multilevel inverter (MLI) is to suppress the leakage current close to zero meanwhile maintaining lower number of semiconductor device count. Self-voltage balancing and voltage boosting capability of SCs are also ensured while designing the proposed MLI. Moreover, optimum switching operation ensures low power dissipation of the semiconductor devices while achieving greater efficiency. The proposed MLI along with the control strategy is developed and validated through MATLAB/Simulink computer simulation environment while an extensive loss analysis is conducted in PLECS simulation platform to ensure a strong feasibility of the proposed MLI.