A new topology of cascaded multilevel inverter

The paper presents an analysis of a novel 13-level inverter, which consists of three cascaded H-bridges per phase. Each H-bridge produces 5-level voltages. The proposed topology has only two bi-directional and four standard IGBT switches in each 5-level H-bridge. The significant advantages of the proposed inverter are simpler control and lower number of switches than in the standard neutral point clamped inverters. Extensive simulation results validate the practicability of the proposed inverter. Several aspects as Total Harmonic Distortion Factor of the inverter output currents, and voltages, harmonic content, and frequency spectrum distribution are studied. The proposed approach can be extended to any desired number of levels.