A New Family of 7-Level Boost Active Neutral Point Clamped Inverter

A new family of 7-Level Boost Active Neutral Point Clamped (7L-BANPC) circuits is proposed in this paper. The proposed topology is derived from the conventional ANPC by adding one additional capacitor to boost the voltage and increase the number of output voltage levels. The proposed topology generates seven output voltage levels using one dc source and two flying capacitors. A specific modulation strategy is presented in this study to provide self-balancing for the flying capacitors of the proposed inverter. Theoretical analysis and the operational modes of the proposed 7L-BANPC are presented in this paper. Highlights of the simulation of the proposed inverter are presented to validate the proposed topology. A scaled-down prototype has been built to validate the workability of the proposed topology.