Journal of Science and Technology (JST)

Volume 2, Issue 1, Jan - February 2017, PP 15-18

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Simulation of 11 Level Hybrid Cascade-Stack (HCS) Inverter

with Reduced Number of Switches
T.Appa Rao
(Instrument Technology, Gandhi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Gunpur, Orissa)

Abstract : This paper presents a new multilevel topology based on cascaded hybrid multi-level (HCS)
inverter. There are different topologies for cascaded inverters for reducing the switches, power loss. The output
voltage is increased and the number of switches is reduced with the HCS inverter. Due to this reduction in
number of on-state switches, power loss and voltage drop is reduced. Simulation results for 11 level symmetric
form of converter is described.
Keywords –Inverter, Switches, Leg-Inv, Cascade stack

I. INTRODUCTION
The development in the multilevel inverters for industry applications are increased today. The main use of
multilevel concept is to generate pure sinusoidal output signal with the help of dc link voltage. The concept of
multilevel inverters are classified in three configurations namely (a) diode clamped, (b) flying capacitors and (c)
cascaded type multilevel inverter. In case of diode clamped inverter it is not possible to obtain the balanced
voltages. Flying-capacitor inverters are used for medium voltages and have the advantages like equal voltage
stress on power switches, self balancing of capacitors and no need for a transformer. Cascade multilevel inverter
is designed by a series of half bridge, full bridge and other sources. General type cascaded multilevel inverter is
formed from H-Bridge units. H- Bridge consists of 4 switches in which pair of switches are operated in a
complementary fashion. Each inverter consists of a DC source that produces zero, positive and negative voltages
at its output terminal. H- Bridge consists of 4 switches. The proposed multilevel hybrid cascaded-stack (HCS) is
shown in figure 2. HCS is composed of four switches and two equal amplitude DC sources. In order to avoid the
undesirable conduction of a middle switch a directional switch is used in each unit.

II. COMPARISION STUDY

Figure 3 shows the configuration structure for HCS topology and from this system the output voltage generated
is 2Vn for nth unit.
The range of voltages under symmetric configuration is expressed as:
Vi = V1; i = 1,2, ….n (1)
The output voltage obtained from the each basic unit is in terms of 2V 1. Therefore, the output from the nth unit is
expressed as,
V (n) = (4n - 1) V1 (2)

Fig 1. Cascaded H-bridge multilevel converter.

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Fig 2. Proposed HCS topology under single basic unit.

Fig 3. Proposed HCS Converter.

The essential unit displayed in Figure 2 in the symmetric arrangement delivers a 11-level voltage waveform. Its
exchanging states are represented in Table 1. In view of this table, the operational rule of the HC-S multilevel
inverter will be a great deal more intelligible. The center bidirectional switch works in a reciprocal way with two
IGBTs on the top and base of the essential unit. Hence, it is \on" when the finish and base IGBTs are off.

The DC voltage wellsprings of the HCS Inverter and the customary course inverter are equivalent
numerically, and equivalent to 2n + 1, where n is the no. of units. In some investigation, correlations are done by
number of bidirectional switches rather than the quantity of IGBTs, which brought about more prominent
lessening of number of switches. Along these lines, it is not precise examination.

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The number of switches and Peak Inverse Voltage (PIV) in the proposed system is obtained as follows:

Nswitches = (m/2) + (5/2) (4)

Peak inverse Voltage (PIV) = (13/6)*m + (37/6) (5)

Table 2 Comparison of conventional cascaded multilevel inverter and Proposed HCS Inverter
Sources Conventional Method Proposed Method
DC Sources 2n+1 2n+1
Switches 8n+4 6n+2
Output Levels 12n+3 12n-1
Vmax 6n+1 6n-1
Peak Inverse Voltage 20n+4 26n-4
On-State Switches 4n+2 3n+1

III. SWITCHING POWER LOSSES

In general the losses in the proposed system are in 2 types:
1. IGBT switching losses
2. Power Loss in antiparallel diode

The power loss in the IGBT is given by

PIGBT, s =( Eon,s + Eoff,s ) fIGBT (6)

Where, PIGBT, s – Switching Power Loss in IGBT

Eon,s – Turn on loss in IGBT
Eoff,s – Turn off loss in IGBT
fIGBT – switching frequency

The power loss in antiparallel diode is given by,

Panti_D, =( Eon,anti_D + Eoff,anti_D ) fIGBT (7)

The conduction power loss rely on upon the quantity of moves, and they are affected by the adjustment strategy.
At long last, the aggregate conduction power loss can be figured as takes after:
(8)

Where n is determined by the switching pattern and indicates the number of turned-on IGBTs.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

Figure 4 illustrates the simulation results for 11 Level proposed HCS inverter. The simulation results for output
voltage and current and its phase difference is shown in figure 4

Fig 4: Waveform for output voltage and current for HCS converter

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V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new multilevel topology based on multilevel hybrid cascade-stack (HCS) inverter,
which is obtained by the series connected modules. This topology is compared with other topologies and it is
shown that the number of active switches are reduced which reduces the voltage drop. The future work for this
topology is extended to the 23 level and 31-Level symmetric and asymmetric modes which improves the THD
of the output voltage.

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