Calculation of Optimal Switching Angles for a Multilevel Inverter using NR and GA-a comparison

Multilevel inverters have multiple industrial applications, as well as their use in renewable energy applications. Cascade Multilevel Inverters with balanced power supplies are the most widely used in research today. This paper presents the application of the Genetic Algorithm and Newton Raphson methods, to solve the system of non-linear equations to obtain the optimum switching angles to decrease the total harmonic distortion (THD) value. With the objective of obtaining a lower THD value, a better-quality output voltage waveform can be achieved in a single-phase, multilevel, cascading inverter. Selective Harmonic Elimination (SHE) is a technique that allows the selection of switching angles so that low order harmonics can be eliminated, thus achieving a significant reduction in the THD value. A comparison of the results obtained in this paper shows that the Genetic Algorithm has a better approach to optimizing harmonics in multilevel inverters compared to the Newton Raphson method.