2004 35lh Annual IEEE Power Elecrronics Specialisrs Conference Aachen.

Germany, 2004

A New Four-Level PWM Inverter Topology for Hihg Power Applications-Effect of

Switching Strategies on Power Losses Distribution
G.S.Perantzakis, F.H. Xepapas, S.N.Manias

NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Laboratory of Electrical Machines
Athens Greece1 Tel.:+301-772-3503, Fax.: +301-772-3593
Email: manias@central.ntua.gr

Absfract-In this paper a novel four-level Pulse Width

Modulation (PWM) hybrid inverter topology is proposed
which is composed of a conventional two-level and a three-level
Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) inverter suitable for high-
voltage power applications. The proposed topology when it is
compared to the conventional four-level NPC PWM inverter
exhibits the following advantages: (a) ability of changing the
losses distribution profile among the devices by selecting the
suitable switching strategy, (b) reduction of total inverter
power semiconductor device losses, (e) ability of bidirectional
operation of all switches, (d) series connected clamping diodes
are not needed and (e) flexibility of using existing power
semiconduetor modules that makes simple the implementation iwener
phase -a phase-b phase-
of the proposed power topology. Moreover, the effect of Fig. I.Thc proposcd thrcc-phasc 4-lcvel hybrid invcrlcr.
different switching strategies on the conduction and switching
losses profde of the proposed inverter is examined by varying
the index modulation depth and the load power factor. A
suitable losses calculation method for hybrid multilevel 11. OPERATION
inverter is used and a comparison of losses distribution profiles Each phase leg of the proposed inverter is composed of
between the proposed inverter and the conventional four -level eight active switches (IGBTs), thus ensuring bidirectional
inverter is carried out. Finally, the theoretical results are operation in all positions. The switches SXI to Sx6 are used
confirmed by simulation and experimental resnlts. for the implementation of a conventional three-level NPC
inverter, while the switches Sxi and Sx8 are used for the
I. INTRODUCTION implementation of a conventional two-level inverter, where
The transformerless multilevel inverters when are x = a,b,c, are the three phases. The input dc-bus voltage is
compared with the conventional two-level inverters exhibit split into four bulk capacitors C,, C1, C, C4 and each
higher output voltage with the same device ratings, lower capacitor is charged to a voltage V,,l4. The modulation
harmonic content and lower EM1 (ElectroMagnetic method used in the proposed inverter is a carrier-based
Interference) levels [ l]-[3]. The proposed four-level PWM Sinusoidal PWM (SPWM), which is shown in fig. 2. As it
inverter (fig. 1) is a combination of a conventional two-level can be seen from fig. 2, the three high frequency triangular
inverter and a three-level NPC inverter, which can be used carrier waveforms are contiguous in-phase disposition
in HVDC transmission systems, AC drives and renewable arrangement, while the three sine modulating waves v, are
energy conversion systems. phase shifted to each other by 120 degrees and are expressed
As it can be seen from fig. 1, the clamped diodes of the by the following equation
NPC part have been replaced by active switches (IGBTs,
MCTs, GTOs, e.t.c.), thus giving the ability of bidirectional
operation of all switches. Selecting the suitable switching
strategy a well-distributed losses dissipation among the
devices can be obtained. This fact allows better utilization of Where: m, = Am = mod. index 5 I (2)
power devices permitting greater power supply per switch. 4,” 4 . m
+ + Ac,l
This ability of alternative switching strategies is an inherent
advantage of the proposed inverter. In addition, by using the
proposed scheme a reduction of total power semiconductor
losses is achieved under the same load and dc-bus voltage,
mf = 2 = frequency ratio =39 (3)

when it is compared with the conventional NPC four-level
inverter. The problem of selecting clamped diodes with
higher reverse voltage blocking rating, as it is required for
conventional NPC inverter, is avoided because clamping
diodes are not needed in the proposed topology.
A,= modulating wave peak-to-peak amplitude
fm= modulating wave frequency = SO Hz
A,,,,A,,, A , , = upper, medium and lower carrier waves
peak-to-peak amplitudes
f , = carrier wave frequency = 1950 Hz.

02004 IEEE.
0-7803-8399-0/04/$20.00 4398
 ~
2004 351h Annual IEEE Power Electronics Specialisrs Conference
When the modulating wave is compared with the upper
triangle signal, transitions between voltage levels (+Vd&’)
and (+V&) are obtained, while when it is compared with
middle and lower triangles transitions between (+V&), (-
V&) and (- Vd&) , (- Vd&’) are respectively obtained. In
the proposed inverter there is a freedom of selecting
different switching pattern combinations, thus allowing
different losses distribution profiles on the devices to be
achieved.
.- . iW-1,*
~.._I-”..I re,* ..___
~
Fig. 2. Thc proposed 4-lcvcl multilevel invcrter carrier bands
and modulation wave for Dhasc a.
Table 1 presents the possible alternative switch
combinations in order to achieve a particular voltage level.
Note that there exist four combinations for obtaining the
middle voltage levels (+I’d&, -
V&), thus giving freedom
as to which combination can be used. From these
combinations, eighteen different switching strategies are
obtained which are presented in Appendix I.
TABLE I
ALTERNATIVE SWITCH COMBINATIONS
The main concern is to find out the switching strategy that
will exhibit the smallest losses standard deviation value
among the inverter devices. According to fig. 3, this is the
9Ih switching strategy which has a standard deviation value
of 8.09 (W). From here on, this switching strategy will be
used for taking simulation and experimental results. For the
same load, modulation index and dc bus voltage, the
conventional NPC four-level inverter exhibits a losses
standard deviation value of 17.94 (W), which is about twice
the value of the proposed inverter.
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Aachen, Germany, 2004
Switch Pair Losses Standart Deviation Per
20.00 >
Switcing Strategy
1 2 3 4&Ri& 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
&&@l
Fig. 3. Standard deviation of device losscs values
oer switching shateev.
For comparison reasons, the per phase losses profiles of
the proposed inverter and the conventional one are presented
in figs. 4 and 5 respectively. Examining figs. 4 and 5 , it can
he seen that the proposed topology has a better losses
distribution profile than the conventional NPC four-level
inverter.
Switchingstrategy 9
- 60 I
Fig. 4. Losses distribution profile of the proposed inverter using
switching strategy 9.
4-level conventionalNPC inverter
Fig. 5. Losses dislribution profile of the conventional NPC
four-level inverter.
111. INVERTER LOSSES
lo. multilevel inverters, unlike two-level inverters, the
losses of each semiconductor device is different fkom one
another and depends on the duty ratio of the device, the
number of output voltage level and the depth of modulation
index [4].
The switching states for each phase of the proposed
hybrid and conventional NPC four-level inverters are
presented in Tables I1 and 111 respectively. Moreover, fig. 6
shows a phase leg of the conventional NPC four-level
inverter.
In the under consideration four-level inverters there are
three voltage regions, which are defined by the adjacent
output voltage levels. That is, the regions 1, 2 and 3 are
located between the voltage levels Vdct2and V,, , vdd4 and -
Vdd4 , -Vddg and -Vdc/2 respectively. Using fig. 7, the switch
duty ratio for each region and voltage level can be
calculated and the results are summarized in Table IV.
2004 35lh A n n u l IEEE Power Electronics Specialisrs Conference Aachen, Germany, 2 w 4

g
TABLEIV
TABLE I1 SWITCH DUTY RATIOS FOR EACH VOLTAGE LEVEL A N 0 REGION
SWITCHIN0 STATES OF THEPROPOSED 4-LEVEL INVERTEX
Voltage Switch Duty Ratios
LCVCl

(+Vdd,) DR,,dc12 = - l + 2 m a cos0

on

off

TABLE 111
SWITCHING STATES OF THE CONVENTIONAL NPC &LEVEL MVERTER

The conduction and switching losses are initially

calculated analytically and then are verified by simulation
results. For power losses calculation, the static
characteristics of the inverter semiconductor devices are
considered and the current is assumed to be sinusoidal,
which is an accepted approximation when the frequency
VdW
I I ratio is greater than 15 (here is S,=39)[4]. The average
conduction (Pcond.)and switching (Pxw.)losses of a device are
calculated using the following equations

.e a
0

-vdIp

Where:
iL = Imaxmu cos 0 'p (-1 (6)
= the fundamental load current
(7)

= the fundamental output phase voltage

Oc,, O,, = the angles that define the beginning and
the end of an interval with conduction losses
e,,, e,, =the angles that define the beginning and
the end of an interval with switching losses
Vdb= the device blocking voltage
D = the duty ratio of the output phase voltage pulse
I,-= the maximum load current
V,, r, = the threshold voltage and the dynamic
resistance of the device respectively
T,. I,, too= the inverter switching period and the
turn-on- and turn-off times of the device
+-w I
Fig. 1.Switch duty ratio dctcrminationfor each voltage lcvcl e = w,
respectively
f = 2nf,1
p = the load power factor angle

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 2004 351k Annual IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference A a c k n , Germany, 2004

TABLE V
The duty ratio of each conducting device depends on the WORKING PARAMETERS FOR THEORETICAL AND
values of the load power factor, the modulation index a?d SIMULATION RESULTS
the output voltage level. Fig. 8 shows an example of .. I
I ^^^ ,..,
determining the conducting devices in relation to
fundamental output phase voltage and load current for
cosrp=0.2 and m,=0.6. Similar diagrams are constructed for
each load power factor and modulation index separately, in
order to determine the conducting devices and their
a 5 Ohms

I
corresponding duty ratios.
for switches (S,,+D,), (Sa~+D2), (S03+D3), (S03+Dj) and
(S,,+D7) are presented in Appendix 11. As it can be seen, the
.
*"'a ' '
I
v, ' '
WF.=."asl
' '1
theoretical results are in good agreement with the simulation
results and thus the losses calculation method used for the
proposed hybrid multilevel inverter is verified. From the
results it is concluded that: (a) for power factors from 0.0 to
0.8 and modulation index smaller than 0.6, the device losses
increase with increasing the modulating index, while it is
independent fiom the power factor value, (h) for modulation
index greater than 0.6 the losses vary from device to device
and are depended on the power factor value, (c) for unity
power factor the losses increase with increasing the
modulation index for switches Sal to Sa4, while remain
nearly unchanged for all the other switches.
A comparison of the device losses between the proposed
and the conventional NPC four-level inverter for 0.8
inductive power factor is presented in fig. 9. From fig. 9, it
is noticed that the conventional inverter for modulation
index greater than 0.6 exhibits higher semiconductor losses
than the proposed inverter, which reaches to 18% for unity
modulation index.
Fig. 8. Conducting dcvices for one fundamental period
with m,=0.6 and eosrp-0.2. Total losses comparison

IV. SIMULATION, THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL 400,O -1

RESULTS

A. Simulation and theoretical results of device losses

As it was shown in Section 11, under the same load and
dc-bus voltage conditions, the losses distribution among the
devices of the proposed inverter is more uniform than the ma
conventional NPC four-level inverter. Referring to fig. 5, it +Hybrid inv. +Conv.inv.
is recognized that in the conventional inverter the 65% of
total device losses are exclusively created by the switches
Fig. 9. Comparison of total power semiconductor losses between
(So2 +DJ, (S, CO3), (Sa4 +D4) and (So>+Dj), while the
thc proposcd and Le convcntional inverters
remaining amount is created by the switches (Sa/ +DI), (So( for cosp4.8 (ind.).
+Dd), (0,)and (D,O/. This is due to the fact that the switches
2 to 5 (fig. 6) conduct during all the four output voltage
levels, while the switches I and 2 conduct only during the B. Simulation and experimental results of output waveforms
voltage levels +Vd& and -VdJ2. On the contrary, in the
The operation of the proposed hybrid inverter is
proposed inverter (fig. 4)the 35% of total losses are created
confirmed by a single phase laboratory prototype. The
by the switches (S, +DJ and (S, +DJ, while the
remaining losses amount is nearly uniformly distributed proposed inverter was implemented using IGBTs type
among the rest devices. HGTGIONIZOBND, the dc-bus voltage of 400 (V),
The power semiconductor losses of the proposed inverter modulation index 0.8 and inductive load 160 (Ohms) with
have been calculated by considering inductive load power power factor 0.9. The gating signals are implemented in
factors : 0.0, 0.2, 0.5, 0.8 and 1.0,while the modulation Matlab and contact with real time by an VO card of Quancer
index is changed from 0.1 to 1 .O. The working parameters (MultiQ-3). Fig. 10 presents the simulation results.
are listed in Table V. The theoretical and simulation results

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2004 35th Annual IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference Aachen, Germany, 2004

As expected, harmonics are centered around the

switching frequency and the triple harmonics in the line-to-
line voltage has been disappeared (and thus the harmonic at
1950 Hz).

.............*j .... . .&. ................

~# ...........iL .......... i, :.. .
..
.
. . .
..
: :
.
(b) :
”.
:

- 1 ._
-..”,- ..-,. /._ ..”/ *.”. ..~.
”-
I.0. ,y. .._. ,_...~,
. . .

(4
............................................... .” ..................
Fig. IO. Simulation resulls oE (a) outpuf phase voltage, (b) line-to-line
outpul voltagc and load eumnt, (c) line-tdine output volegc
specmm ofthe proposcd invertw (m,=l.O, m ~ 3 9 ) .

(4
Fig. 12. Experimcnlal rcsults of the blocking volragc
and eolleclor current for IGBTs Sa?(a,b) and
S,, (c,d)(100 Vidiv, I Aldiv).

The peak line-to-line fundamental voltage is given by the

same equation as in conventional inverter

. .

The experimental results of output phase voltage and load

current are presented in Fig. 1 I, while a sample of blocking
voltage and collector current for IGBTs So, and S, are
shown in Fig. 12. By referring to Figure 11, we can see that
there is agreement between simulation and experimental
results, while the correct switch operation of the prototype is
verified from the sample waveforms in Fig. 12.

(b)
v. CONCLUSION
Fig. 11. Expximental results of:(a) output phase volwge,@) load In this paper was presented a novel four-level PWM
eumnt of the proposed invcncr ( 100 Vldiv, 0.5 Ndiv). hybrid inverter topology composed of a conventional two-

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 2004 35rk Annual IEEE Power Elecrronics Specialisrs Conference Aachen. C e r m n y . 2004

level and a conventional three-level NPC inverter. The APPENDIX I(Continued)

proposed scheme, which is suitable for high-voltage high-
power applications, was compared to the conventional NPC
four-level inverter and it was found that exhibits the
following advantages: (a) better losses distribution profile
among the power semiconductor devices, (b) up to 18%
lower semiconductor devices losses when operating with
modulation index above 0.6, ( c ) ability of bidirectional
operation of all power semiconductor devices, thus
permitting the inverter to operate with Zero Current
Switching (ZCS) and (d) there is no need for clamping
APPENDIX II
diodes. However, the proposed inverter uses two additional
active switches. It was verified that the theoretical results,
obtained using the power losses calculation method for the Losses of S a l + D l +wsphi=
proposed hybrid inverter, were in close agreement with the 1.0
simulation ones. Finally, there was a good agreement -0-wsphi=
between experimental and simulation resulls of the proposed
g .^ 1
60.0~

4U.U
0.6
inverter. +wsphi=
2 20.0 0.5
APPENDIX I 0.0 %cosphi=
-.
0
0.
0
9
0
-0. oi
0
0.2
-*Cmsphi=
SWITCH COMBINATIONS OF POSSIBLE ma 0.0
SWITCHING STRATEGIES

Losses of Sa2+D2
80.0 3
60.0

= 40.0
20.0
0.0
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.9 1
ma

Losses of Sa3+D3

60.0
Volt. Lev.
SalSa2
% 40.0
5 20.0
0.0
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.9 1
ma

Losses of Sa5+D5

60.0 7

2 40.0
I20.0
0.0
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.9 1
ma

I'ig. 13.Theoretical results ofpower losscs afdevices (S,,+DJ, (SL+DJ.

(S,,+Dr), (S.,+DJ and (S.,+D,)of thc prapased invcrtcr.

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 2004 35rk A n n u l IEEE Power Elecrronics Speciolisrs Conjerunce Aachen. Germany. 2004

Losses of Sa7+D7 Losses of Sa5+D5

60.0
3 40.0
s 20.0
60’o
I
O.O.,
3 , , I I , , , ,
g 40.0
E 20.0
0.0
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
ma ma

Fig. 13. (Continued)

Losses of Sa7+D7

60.0

y) 40.0
Losses of Sal+Dl -cosphi- E
r n.- 9 20.0
60.0 -cosphi=
g 40.0 0.8 0.0
2 20.0 -cosphi= 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
0.5 ma
0.0 -. 0. -0. c. 9
*cosphi=
0 0 0 0 0.2
-cosphi= Fig. 14. (Continucd)
ma
0.0

Losses of Sa2+D2 REFERENCES

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