Performance Comparison of Multilevel and 2-level Inverters for High Voltage E-drive Application

This paper presents a detailed literature study on the advantages of using higher voltages and the usage of multilevel inverters in electric vehicles. Use of higher voltages with a multilevel inverter improves the overall performance of E-drive application. Lower charging time, better efficiency, higher power density, better THD and waveform quality, inherent fault tolerance and lower frequency of operation are the foremost advantages of using high voltage multilevel inverters in electric vehicles. A detailed parametric study using MATLAB simulation tool is performed and simulation results are presented in this paper. Comparison of multilevel inverters and 2-level inverters in terms of many basic parameters like losses and efficiency, cost, total harmonic distortion, switching frequency, reliability and fault tolerance are discussed in this paper. Inverter losses modelling and simulation results are also discussed.