A Carrier-Based PWM Control Strategy for Three-Level NPC Inverter Based on Bootstrap Gate Drive Circuit

This paper proposes a pulsewidth modulation (PWM) control strategy for the efficient operation of the three-phase three-level neutral-point-clamped (NPC) inverters based on a bootstrap gate drive circuit. The bootstrap circuit used in the three-level NPC inverter has advantages in terms of the cost reduction and the compact circuit design. However, the bootstrap circuit has a drawback due to the low gate-emitter voltage during the low-frequency and variable load condition of the inverter system. This problem leads to lower efficiency and reliability of the inverter. Therefore, this paper analyzes the causes of the voltage decrease in bootstrap capacitors and proposes PWM control strategy to increase the voltage level of bootstrap capacitors for the efficient operation of the inverter. The proposed PWM control strategy provides efficient and stable operation of the inverter system by selecting the unipolar, dipolar, or partial-dipolar modulation methods according to the fundamental output frequency and load current of the inverter system. Furthermore, this paper proposes a design method of the size of bootstrap capacitors for the optimal circuit design. The effectiveness of the proposed PWM control strategy is verified using the experimental results.