Reduced Switch Count Three-Phase Five-Level Boosted ANPC Inverter with Unipolar PWM Scheme for Electric Vehicle Propulsion Drive

In the electric vehicle industry, multilevel inverters (MLIs) are widely used for power conversion in high-power-medium-voltage propulsion drives. The five-level ANPC topology with voltage boosting capability is a promising MLI topology for single-stage solar photovoltaic power conversion. The switching pulses for the MLIs are generated using various PWM techniques. The performance of the five-level boosted ANPC inverter is compared using four distinct unipolar PWM techniques: unipolar sine PWM, unipolar 60
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PWM, unipolar third harmonic injection (THI) PWM, and unipolar zero sequence injection (ZSI) PWM. The performance of these PWM schemes are tested on real-time OPAL-RT platform. Under unipolar THI PWM, the 5L-boosted ANPC outperforms in terms of %THD reduction and higher fundamental output voltage magnitude. Furthermore, the ZSI PWM balances the neutral point potential efficiently.