Model Predictive Control for 17-Levels Inverter in PV systems

Multilevel Inverters (MLIs) are considered the preferred converters for medium voltage high-power applications. They have several advantages like modularity, lower switching stress and better power quality. However, the number of components used in MLIs is significant. This paper proposes a new 17-level multilevel inverter (17L-MLI) for photovoltaic (PV) systems controlled by model predictive control (MPC) technique. The proposed topology uses 6 two-quadrant switches, 3 four-quadrant switches, 2 DC sources, and 4 capacitors. The capacitors are self-balancing, and accordingly, the control of the proposed 17L-MLI is simple. The finite-control-set MPC (FCS-MPC) is employed to control the proposed 17L-MLI. The performance of the proposed 17L-MLI is validated by experimental results using hardware in the loop (HIL) system.