The increasing integration of large solar PV and wind farms into the power grid has\nfueled, over the past two decades, growing demands for high-power, high-voltage, utility-scale\ninverters. Multilevel inverters have emerged as the industry�s choice for megawatt-range inverters\nbecause of their reduced voltage stress, capability for generating an almost-sinusoidal voltage,\nbuilt-in redundancy and other benefits. This paper presents a novel switched-source multilevel\ninverter (SS MLI) architecture. This new inverter shows superior capabilities when compared\nto existing topologies. It has reduced voltage stress on the semiconductor, uses fewer switches\n(i.e., reduced size/weight/cost) and exhibits increased efficiency. The proposed SS MLI is comprised\nof two voltage sources (V1,V2) and six switches. It is capable of generating five-level output voltage\nin symmetric mode (i.e., V1 = V2) and seven-level output voltage in asymmetric mode (i.e., V1 = V2).\nWe present simulations results (using MATLAB R /Simulink R ) for five- and seven-level output\nvoltages, and they strongly support the validity of the proposed inverter. These positive results are\nfurther supported experimentally using a laboratory prototype.
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