Flying capacitors multilevel inverter: architecture, control and active balancing

Abstract

To improve efficiency and productivity of electric energy generators based on photovoltaic, wind or hybrid systems; several DC/AC conversion techniques have been developed and tested like multilevel inverters. Multilevel inverters are a performant solution for the ramp-up of converters. As soon as the DC supply voltage exceeds a few kV, it is necessary to combine switches, switching cells or converters. This paper presents a progressive study of an interesting type of these inverters namely flying capacitor multilevel inverters (FCMLI): architecture, evolutions, benefits and inconvenient. In fact, we processed 3-and 5-level FCMLI while presenting possible circuit schemes and simulation results on Matlab Simulink. Finally, a general formulation has been adopted and applied to a 17 level FCMLI.