Low component merged cells cascaded-transformer multilevel inverter featuring an enhanced reliability

Requiring lots of components is the main demerit of multilevel inverters. This problem makes them expensive, bulky, and with a high possibility of failure. Therefore, the issue of components reduction in multilevel topologies is of great importance. Cascaded transformers multilevel inverter (CTMI) i...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IET power electronics 2017-06, Vol.10 (8), p.855-862
Main Authors: Jahan, Hossein Khoun, Naseri, Mersad, Haji-Esmaeili, Mohammad Mehdi, Abapour, Mehdi, Zare, Kazem
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
cascade systems
cascaded‐transformer multilevel inverter
computer aid simulation
DC‐source
distributed generation applications
enhanced reliability
failure analysis
failure possibility
invertors
low component merged cells CTMI
Markov processes
Markov reliability evaluation
mean time to failure
multilevel topologies
power transformers
reduced components structure
reliability
remaining life assessment
Research Article
switching elements
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Requiring lots of components is the main demerit of multilevel inverters. This problem makes them expensive, bulky, and with a high possibility of failure. Therefore, the issue of components reduction in multilevel topologies is of great importance. Cascaded transformers multilevel inverter (CTMI) is a converter that employs only one DC-source, thus it eliminates the need for several DC-sources. Same as the other multilevel inverters, CTMI consists of lots of components. This disadvantage of CTMI has been resolved through a new reduced components topology introduced in the present work. This topology uses almost half the number of switching elements, such as power switch and gate driver, which are required to construct a conventional CTMI for the same output voltage levels. Furthermore, to the end of enhancing the reliability of CTMI, this paper, using Markov reliability evaluation approach and evaluating the reliability and the Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) of the converters, has investigated the reliability of both the conventional and the proposed structures. Additionally, in order to prove the feasibility and correctness of the suggested topology computer aid simulation results along with the experimental results have been provided.
ISSN:1755-4535
1755-4543
1755-4543
DOI:10.1049/iet-pel.2016.0787