Single-phase switched-capacitor boost multilevel inverter interfacing solar photovoltaic system

The focus on the generation of clean power from photovoltaic (PV) system has increased the utilization of different power converters. Inverter is one of the key converter, which converts the dc output from PV system to required ac output in standalone/grid-tied applications. However, conventional inverters has high distortion in the output voltage and to address this issue several multilevel inverters (MLIs) have been introduced recently. Despite many advantages, conventional MLIs without voltage boosting ability are not the suitable solution in PV applications. Motivated by this issue, this work presents a switched-capacitor (SC) based boost type MLI using reduced number of components. The proposed circuit produces a 7-level output from a single dc input or a single photovoltaic (PV) link, which can create three times boost ac output at the load side. The operational analysis is detailed for each mode. Further, a comparison is conducted with recent topologies, which validates the advantage of the proposed structure. Simulation results are provided for different operating conditions. The results are also validated by utilizing an experimental prototype in a laboratory at different possible working conditions.