Low component merged cells cascaded-transformer multilevel inverter featuring an enhanced reliability

Requiring lots of components is the main demerit of multilevel inverters. This problem makes them expensive, bulky, and with a high possibility of failure. Therefore, the issue of components reduction in multilevel topologies is of great importance. Cascaded transformers multilevel inverter (CTMI) is a converter that employs only one DC-source, thus it eliminates the need for several DC-sources. Same as the other multilevel inverters, CTMI consists of lots of components. This disadvantage of CTMI has been resolved through a new reduced components topology introduced in the present work. This topology uses almost half the number of switching elements, such as power switch and gate driver, which are required to construct a conventional CTMI for the same output voltage levels. Furthermore, to the end of enhancing the reliability of CTMI, this paper, using Markov reliability evaluation approach and evaluating the reliability and the Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) of the converters, has investigated the reliability of both the conventional and the proposed structures. Additionally, in order to prove the feasibility and correctness of the suggested topology computer aid simulation results along with the experimental results have been provided.