A comparative analysis of classical three phase multilevel (five level) inverter topologies

Multilevel inverters are an attractive choice for multi mega-watt industrial drive applications. In comparison with conventional two level voltage source inverter this technology gives quality performance. In this paper comparison of three classical topologies of three phase multilevel inverter is presented. The multilevel inverters analyzed using MATLAB-Simulink software are Neutral-Point-Clamped or Diode Clamped Multilevel Inverter (NPC-MLI or DC-MLI) Flying Capacitor Multilevel Inverter (FC-MLI) and Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Inverter (CHB-MLI). The comparison is based on output voltage quality and power circuit complexity. Each inverter is controlled by the multi-carrier sinusoidal pulse width modulation (MC-SPWM).