A Single-Phase Five-Level Transformer-Less PV Inverter for Leakage Current Reduction

Multilevel inverters are becoming more and more popular in photovoltaic applications because of lower total harmonic distortion, lower switching stress and lower electromagnetic interference. In this article, a single-phase five-level transformer-less PV inverter is proposed for the purpose of leakage current reduction. The inverter is based on a flying capacitor (FC) configuration, the voltages of FCs are balanced at
V
_dc
/4 through the coordination of the two half-bridge at the switching frequency, helps to reduce investment cost in passive elements. Two bidirectional circuits are added to guarantee a constant common-mode (CM) voltage. The leakage current elimination mechanism is analyzed in detail with operational states and CM equivalent model. The losses are analyzed, the control strategy and the FCs are detailed designed. A comparison is also made in terms of the number of elements, voltage stress and CM voltage. Experiment results under grid-connected condition show that the proposed topology achieves both excellent differential-mode and CM performance.