Switching Loss Comparison of a Cascaded Diode-Clamped Inverter with Conventional Multilevel Inverters

Cascaded H-bridge inverter is best suitable for isolated DC links. It is used in renewable energy applications. The output voltage levels are doubled With respect to number of sources. More number of switches for this inverter is an exceptional snag. In contrary, diode-clamped inverter has high efficiency at fundamental frequency. Though the diode-clamped inverter has poor switching efficiency and expensive, it is the widely used inverter in many power electronic applications. In this paper, a hybrid inverter which uses two diode-clamped inverters in cascade to use isolated DC sources—cascaded diode-clamped inverter (CDCI). This CDCI inverter is considered as hybrid inverter in this paper. This hybrid inverter’s switching losses and conduction losses are compared with conventional topologies.