A Multilevel Switched Capacitor Inverter with Reduced Components and Self-Balance

This paper presents a novel 13-level switched capacitor multilevel inverter, which uses less devices to achieve six-fold voltage gain. The proposed topology structure consists of twelve transistors, two diodes, and three capacitors. It is worth mentioning that characteristics as having five complementary switch pairs and self-balanced electric capacity voltages are conducive to simplifying the control strategy. Moreover, the above components constitute the switched capacitor unit and L-type unit. The inverter can acquire more voltage levels and a higher voltage gain by using multiple L-type units with fewer elements. Furthermore, the cost function is employed to comprehensively appraise the performance of the proposed inverter. The comparison with other existing 13-level inverters shows that the proposed multilevel inverter can effectively decrease the value of the cost function. Finally, the simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the 13-level inverter.