Harmonic Elimination of HBridge Seven Level Inverter

Introduction
Multilevel inverter is considered as one the most recent and popular type of advances in power electronics. It synthesizes desired output voltage waveform from several dc sources used as input for the multilevel inverter. As the number of dc sources is increased, the output voltage waveforms obtained is closer to the sinusoidal voltage waveform. These multilevel inverters found there application in induction motor drives, static var compensation, UPS system, laminators, mills, conveyors and compressors. To obtain the sinusoidal voltage waveform from multiple dc sources the semiconductors switches such as MOSFET/IGBT are switched on and off in such a way to keep the THD % to its minimum value. These semiconductor switches are of low power ratings but of high switching speed. The multilevel inverter configurations include; flying capacitor topology [10], diode clamped topology [11] and H-bridge topology. The commonly used switching technique is selective harmonics elimination method at fundamental frequency, the harmonics equation obtained is nonlinear in nature and thus different methods are available to solve the harmonics equation to eliminate the particular harmonics.

Problem statement
Popular and traditional PWM modulation methods are not the best solution for multilevel inverter control due to their high switching frequency. The elective harmonic elimination method has emerged as a promising modulation control method for multilevel inverters. The major difficulty for the selective harmonic elimination method is to solve the equations characterizing harmonics; however, the solutions are not available for the whole modulation index range, and it does not eliminate any number of specified harmonics to satisfy the application requirements. The proposed harmonic elimination method is used to eliminate any number of harmonics and can be applied to H-Bridge Multilevel Inverter application requirements.

Proposed method
In this paper, a seven-level inverter switching at the fundamental frequency is proposed. However, many interesting PWM techniques have been proposed for controlling these inverters. The lower order harmonics are eliminated by choosing the switching angles that do not generate specifically chosen harmonics. In this study, a harmonic elimination technique is presented to control a multilevel inverter in such a way that it turns out to be an efficient low total harmonic distortion (THD) inverter. It can be used to interface distributed dc energy sources to a main ac grid or as an interface to a motor drive powered by fuel cells, batteries, or ultra-capacitors.

Harmonics
Harmonics are electric voltages and currents that appear on the electric power system as a result of non-linear electric loads. Harmonic frequencies in the power grid are a frequent cause of power quality problems. Harmonic components should be reduced as much as possible. In a normal alternating current power system, the voltage varies sinusoidally at a specific frequency, usually 50 or 60 hertz. When a linear electrical load is connected to the system, it draws a sinusoidal current at the same frequency as the voltage (though usually not in phase with the voltage). When a non-linear load, such as a rectifier, is connected to the system, it draws a current that is not necessarily sinusoidal. The current waveform can become quite complex, depending on the type of load and its interaction with other components of the system. Regardless of how complex the current waveform becomes, as described through Fourier series analysis, it is possible to decompose it into a series of simple sinusoids, which start at the power system fundamental frequency and occur at integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. Further examples of non-linear loads include common office equipment such as computers and printers, Fluorescent lighting, battery chargers and also adjustable speed drives.

Advantages:
As the number of levels increases, the harmonic content of the output waveform decreases the filter size. Lower switching losses are due to the devices switched on at the fundamental frequency without increasing the harmonic content in the output. Reactive power flow can be controlled, as this does not cause unbalance in the capacitor voltages. Fast dynamic response. Back to back operation is possible.

DISADVANTAGES
High number of clamping diodes is required as the number of levels increase. Active power transfer causes unbalance in the DC-bus capacitors, this complicates the control of the system.

Conclusions
The selected harmonic elimination is a popular issue in multilevel inverter design. The proposed selective harmonic elimination method for H-Bridge seven level inverter has been validated in simulation. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can be used to eliminate any number of specific lower order harmonics effectively and results in a dramatic decrease in the output voltage THD. In the proposed harmonic elimination method, the lower order harmonic distortion is largely reduced in fundamental switching. Furthermore, in the simulation reported here, an induction motor load is connected to the three-phase seven level H-Bridge inverter, and the voltage waveforms are collected for analysis. The FFTs of these waveforms show that their harmonic content is close to the calculated values.