A five-level stacked neutral point clamped converter based on multi-state switching cell

This paper presents a five-level Stacked Neutral Point Clamped (5L-SNPC) converter based on Multi-State Switching Cell (MSSC) to increase current capacity, output voltage levels, and power processing and to achieve a better balancing of total losses in semiconductors, compared to the most popular multilevel converter used in high-power medium-voltage applications, named of conventional three-level NPC converter. The 5L-SNPC-MSSC proposed converter has more degrees of freedom and the load current passes simultaneously or alternatively through four parallel paths, depending on Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) strategy. To verify its feasibility, simulation and experimental results from a 5kW prototype are presented.