Voltage source converter in high voltage applications: Multilevel versus two-level converters

This paper presents a comparison between two-level and multilevel converters for medium-voltage applications. The comparison focuses on issues such as waveform quality, voltage and current stresses on the switching devices, switching frequency per device, and conversion losses (mainly, on-state and switching losses). The modular multilevel converter (M2C) is selected as viable representative of the multilevel family in this study, because it can be extended to a high number of levels and is able to function independent of operating condition.