A novel reduced switch count multilevel AC/AC converter

Summary from only given. Despite all the unique features multilevel converters offer, their high number of required power switches has restricted their implementation to particular applications. To mitigate this problem, a novel multilevel ac/ac converter is proposed in this paper which utilises less number of semiconductor devices in its structure. The proposed converter is achieved by cascading recently introduced reduced switch count ac/ac converter and is comparable in performance to cascaded h-bridge multilevel converters except that it is an ac/ac converter capable of working in regenerative mode. The proposed configuration retains all the features of CHB MLIs such as low output voltage distortion, reduced dv/dt stresses, low distortion input ac current and modular structure. Moreover, compared to conventional CHB converters, the number of switches and related drive circuits are reduced in the proposed converter by 25%. The novel structure is introduced, its generalized carrier based modulation scheme is elaborated and a control method is suggested for it. The validity of operation of the proposed system is verified through simulation.