Seventeen Level Switched Capacitor Inverters With the Capability of High Voltage Gain and Low Inrush Current

The topology of a 17-level (17L) hybrid switched-capacitor multilevel inverter (SCMLI) with high voltage gain is presented in this work. A single source, four capacitors, six half-bridge switches (five with antiparallel diodes and one half-bridge without antiparallel diodes), and five diodes is used in the proposed SCMLI. The total standing voltage (TSV), cost function (CF), and maximum blocking voltage (MBV) across the switches and capacitors are all reduced by this inverter. The MBV is half the output voltage, lowering component costs and reducing the overall size of the inverter to achieve high power density. In addition, a soft-charging approach has been implemented to reduce the current stress on the components. The proposed SCMLI advantages over current state-of-the-art 17-L inverters are fully examined in terms of TSV, CF, and MBV. To determine the viability of the proposed 17-L inverter, several experimental tests on a 1-kW laboratory prototype are conducted.