Nineteen multilevel asymmetric cascaded with an improved modulation strategy

The increase of the power demand and the technology modernization of industrial processes, results in the rapid expansion of electric-electronic equipment susceptible to poor power quality in medium voltage distribution systems. Therefore, problems related to energy quality, which in the last decades were responsible only for annoying situations and small losses to residential and commercial costumers, now cause damage to equipments and high financial losses to industries, especially those that use complex industrial processes. The necessity of a better energy quality for industry encourages the transition of the custom power equipments, typically used in low voltage systems, to work in medium voltage systems. This recent interest has been instigating researches from the power-electronics society in multilevel power converter techniques, which present a viable and efficient alternative to control the power flow in medium voltage systems. In this context, this article presents a nineteen multilevel distribution static synchronous compensator (DSTATCOM), with minimum active components, to improve the power quality in industrial installations. Simulations and experimental results show the proper performance of the proposed multilevel converter.