Hardware Implementation of an Asymmetrical 11-Level Inverter with Automatic Boost Charge Control in PV Applications

The increasing electricity demands for residential purposes results in the development of renewable photovoltaic standalone systems. With power converter technology as the core of the design; an undesirable harmonic distortion which affects the durability of electric equipment emerges from the construction that is above recommended practice standards. For decades, continuous research for the means to reduce harmonics in the power inverter unit of the system leads to multilevel technology. Nevertheless, the conventional topology of inverters would often deal with volume building and analysis complexity as the number of level increases. This paper discusses a further hardware implementation of the unique asymmetrical design of an 11-level inverter with an efficient number of reduced switches to achieve a higher level demand. This inverter is designed for single phase off-grid photovoltaic system application. The first verification of this research is a simulation design of the proposed topology. Finally, the hardware implementation which is done in a laboratory test environment, the THDi test value is recorded 3.43% for the fundamental current of 4.72A at a frequency of 50Hz measured with the HIOKI 3286-20 power meter THD record function.