Three Phase Three-Level PWM Switched Voltage Source Inverter With Zero Neutral Point Potential

A new three phase three-level pulsewidth modulation (PWM) switched voltage source inverter with zero neutral point potential is proposed. It consists of three single-phase inverter modules and each module is composed of a switched voltage source and inverter switches. The major advantage is that the peak value of the phase output voltage is twice as high as that of the conventional neutral-point-clamped PWM inverter. Thus, the proposed inverter is suitable for applications with low voltage sources such as batteries, fuel cells, or solar cells. Furthermore, three-level waveforms of the proposed inverter can be achieved without the switch voltage unbalance problem. Since the average neutral point potential of the proposed inverter is zero, a common ground between the input stage and the output stage is possible. Therefore, it can be applied to a transformerless power conditioning system. The proposed inverter is verified by a PSpice simulation and experimental results based on a laboratory prototype.