Comparative Harmonic Analysis of Diode Clamped Multi-Level Inverter

Power quality has been main issue among the consumers nowadays. The consumer devices are based on power electronics devices for better efficiency which tend to introduce various current harmonics in our power system at the point of common coupling. With the accession of renewable energy sources as the better and environment friendly alternative to meet the increasing energy demand, the inverters find inevitable application in the integration of renewable energy plants with the grid, the quality of power has emerged as a future complication as these also tend to generate current harmonics in the line. It has been always difficult to maintain the quality of electric power so as to keep it within the acceptable limits. Diode clamped multilevel inverter is a matured topology used in several industries and also being used in renewable energy applications due to its several advantages over traditional two-level inverter. This paper is focused on the study of five-level and fifteen-level cascaded Hbridge inverter and total harmonic distortion in output voltage waveforms is compared. In lieu of this a diode clamped multilevel inverter is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink environment which reduces the current THD of the distorted signal below the limit defined as per the IEEE 519 Std.