A Novel Multilevel Inverter Topology Aiming Reduction the Switch Count and Converter Cost

Inverters as one of the most important elements of power systems have been profoundly developed in recent decades and their performance has attracted researches in control and structure point of view. In this paper, a novel bidirectional structure is proposed for multilevel converter in order to reduction the switch count and total converter cost. This structure contains DC sources, power switches and power diodes. The proposed structure is presented for symmetrical mode and the number of power electronic devices is decreased in comparison with similar works. Considering recent proposed symmetrical structures, the proposed structure has superior condition in terms of semiconductor switches as well as converter cost. The performance of the proposed single phase symmetrical eleven-level converter is analyzed and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink for both PWM and selective harmonic elimination switching methods. Not only the results are desirable, but also the experimental results of laboratory prototype validate the simulation results.