Multilevel Inverter Based Distribution STATCOM: Application of the Cross-Switched Multilevel Inverter

Multilevel inverters are widely used in various applications due to their interesting features. They can be connected to the grid as a STATCOM to improve grid power quality and voltage control. In this paper, a distributed STATCOM (DSTATCOM) is provided based on cross-switched multilevel inverter which is connected to a low voltage distribution system. The multilevel topology employed in this paper, uses fewer switches for a certain number of output voltage levels than other conventional topologies and produces output voltage with high quality and lower harmonic distortion. In the proposed DSTATCOM system, a simple control method for balancing the capacitors voltage is presented. Also, the proposed DSTATCOM is compared with the conventional 3-level and 5-level CHB inverter based DSTATCOM. The simulation of the studied system is carried out in the MATLAB/Simulink software and the results are presented and discussed.