Cascaded Multilevel Inverter With Regeneration Capability and Reduced Number of Switches

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) Vol. 55; no. 3; pp. 1059 - 1066
• Main Authors: Lezana, P., Rodriguez, J., Oyarzun, D.A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.03.2008; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bridge circuits; Converters; Diodes; Electric potential; Inverters; Multilevel; Multilevel systems; Pulse width modulation; Pulse width modulation converters; Pulse width modulation inverters; pulsewidth modulated power converters; Reactive power; Rectifiers; regeneration capability; Regenerative; Switches; Topology; Voltage; Voltage control; Waveforms; Regeneration capability; Pulse width modulated power converters; Multilevel systems
• ISSN: 0278-0046; 1557-9948
• DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2008.917095

Multilevel converters are a very interesting alternative for medium and high power drives. One of the more flexible topologies of this type is the cascaded multicell converter. This paper proposes the use of a single-phase reduced cell suitable for cascaded multilevel converters. This cell uses a reduced single-phase active rectifier at the input and an H-bridge inverter at the output side. This topology presents a very good performance, effectively controlling the waveform of the input current and of the output voltage and allowing operation in the motoring and regenerative mode. The results presented in this paper confirm that this medium voltage inverter effectively eliminates low frequency input current harmonics at the primary side of the transformer and operates without problems in regenerative mode.