Improving power quality with reducing output harmonics for electric vehicle applications by using bacteria foraging algorithm

Abstract

Abstract:The requirements for the power inverter of the electric vehicles (EVs) include high peak power, low output harmonics, inexpensive circuit and low continuous power rating. The purpose of this paper is to reduce the output harmonics of a cascade H-bridge multilevel inverter for EV applications by means of a bacterial foraging algorithm (BFA). In this study, the modified BFA is proposed as a technique for solving non-linear equations of selective harmonics elimination technique for determining optimal switching angles in multilevel inverters. The proposed optimisation method enhances the convergence rate and accuracy in dealing with complex problems with high dimensions, by adding improved and dynamic aspects to its main algorithm. Also, in this paper, a lower number of DC voltage sources have been used in the provided inverter compared with common multilevel inverters; this has resulted in the reduction in price of the inverter. Simulation results on various conditions were carried out using PSCAD/EMTDC software.Keywords: cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter; power quality; modulation method; switching angles; harmonics; BFA; bacterial foraging algorithm.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Farsadi, M. and Ahmadi, M. (2016) 'Improving power quality with reducing output harmonics for electric vehicle applications by using bacteria foraging algorithm', Int.