Performance Comparison of Five-Phase Three-Level NPC to Five-Phase Two-Level Voltage Source Inverter

Multiphase multi-level inverter have a great advantages over conventional three-phase two-level or three-level inverters. They are used in electric drives for all industrial applications. To utilize an inverter with high efficiency, there should be a low switching losses, optimum common-mode voltage (CMV), less total harmonic distortion (THD) and maximum DC link voltage utilization. Various carrier pulse width modulation (CPWM) methods are available to achieve these performance index. However, all these techniques has inherent CMV generation. Hence in this paper a space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) technique is applied to reduce CMV. The objective of this paper is to study the comparative performance of five-phase three-level neutral point clamped (FPTHL-NPC) inverter with five-phase two-level (FPTL) inverter for same loading for wide range of modulation index. In the proposed algorithm, the switching vectors are selected in such a way that the CMV got reduced and the current THD is minimized. It is observed that the FPTHL-NPC inverter holds best performance. The simulation results are validated and presented through experimental results.