Wind energy conversion based on seven-level cascaded H-bridge inverter using LabVIEW FPGA

In this paper, an isolated wind energy conversion system (WECS) based on the cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter (CHBMLI) topology employing a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) driven by a variable speed wind turbine and feeding high power single-phase local loads has been proposed. A seven-level cascaded H-bridge inverter employing phase-shifted multi-carrier pulse width modulation is implemented using LabVIEW FPGA. The output of the synchronous generator with fixed excitation, emulating a PMSG is connected to a three phase diode bridge rectifier. The DC output of the rectifier is then connected to the proposed topology of three H-bridges using IGBT based intelligent power modules (IPM) thus forming a single phase CHBMLI in the laboratory to obtain the experimental results. The switching pulses for the IPM are generated with phase shifted multi carrier PWM using NI LABVIEW with the help of PCI 7831R FPGA data acquisition board that in turn generates a seven-level output voltage across a single-phase load.