Single-phase seven-level PWM inverter for PV systems employing multi-level boost converter

In recent years, there has been a great attention towards applying renewable energy sources (RESs) such as photovoltaic (PV), wind energy... etc. However, RESs generate power at low voltage, which is not suitable for direct supply of loads. PV systems become the most demanded as RES due to their clean operation. This paper presents a new topology which can synthesize multi-level output voltage. The proposed pulse width modulated (PWM) inverter is connected with a multilevel boost converter (MLBC) to extract maximum power from the PV module and to boost the PV output voltage. Hence, a single-phase seven-level inverter is proposed with reduced number of switching components compared with conventional three level inverters. In addition, low total harmonic distortion (THD), less circuit complexity and lower cost can be obtained. MAT LAB/SI MULINK is used to confirm effectiveness of the proposed inverter.