A Novel SVM Strategy with Carrier-based Implementation for Three-level Simplified Neutral-Point-Clamped-Inverters

The three-level simplified neutral point clamped (3L-SNPC) inverter has been studied in recent years to unlock its potential for electrical drives and smart grids. Unfortunately, nearly all the existing papers on the 3L-SNPC inverter focus on control development. The carrier-based implementation of space vector modulation scheme and its associated converter loss analysis under various operating conditions are missing. In practice, these two points are paramount for industry applications. To fill such research gap, this paper proposes a simple carrier-based implementation of space vector modulation strategy for the 3L-SNPC inverter, which contributes to reducing the implementation cost and complexity. Furthermore, important performance metrics including execution time, loss and total harmonic distortion of the 3L-SNPC inverter under the proposed modulation strategy are experimentally compared with those of the state-of-art modulation strategies for 3L-SNPC inverter to validate the efficiency of the proposed modulation strategy. Comparative analysis is carried out in full modulation range.