CONTENTS

Page no.

Certificate...1
Acknowledgement...2
Abstract...3

Chapter 1- Inverters..5
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Types of inverter
1.3 Simulation and results

Chapter 2- Induction motor and its control27

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Types of induction motor
2.3 Various methods of control of induction machine

Chapter 3- Voltage source inverter fed induction.36

motor drive
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Theory of constant V/f control

Chapter 4- Simulink model for VSI fed drive..42

4.1 Introduction
4.2 Development of simulink model
4.3 Simulink results

Conclusion66
Reference

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF VOLTAGE SOURCE

MULTILEVEL INVERTER

PROJECT
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF

Master of Technology
In
Electrical Engineering
(Power system and drives)
By
KHALIQUR RAHMAN
08-EEM-102
DD-5272
UNDER SUPERVISION OF

Mr. Dr ABU TARIQE

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Z.H.COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING &TECHNOLOGY
ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY
ALIGARH (INDIA)
2009-2010

DEDICATE
D TO MY
PARENTS

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL
ENGINEERING
ALIGA R H MUS LIM UNIVER S IT Y, ALIG AR H- 202 002 (U.P.) IND IA
Telephone:
qariabutariq@gmail.com

Email:

Certificate
It

is

to

certify

PERFORMANCE

that

the

ANALYSIS

project-work
OF

VOLTAGE

entitled
SOURCE

MULTILEVEL INVERTERS is an original research work

and is carried out by Mr. KHALIQUR RAHMAN in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award
of

degree

ELECTRICAL

of

MASTER

EIGINEERING

OF

TECHNOLOGY

(Power

System

in
and

Drives). The work embodied in the project has been

carried out under my supervision and guidance and is
not

submitted

anywhere,

to

the

best

of

my

knowledge, for the award of degree for master of

technology.

Dated
Place

:
: Aligarh

(Dr. ABU TARIQ)

Sr. Lecturer
Department of Electrical Engg
Z.H. College of Engg & Tech
A.M.U. Aligarh

Acknowledgement

In the praise of Almighty ALLAH, who blessed me to

get the strength to embark upon this task of keeping
into realms of facts and events.
On

the

event

myproject,

of

would

the

successful

like

to

thank

completion
Aligarh

of

Muslim

university, for providing me with an opportunity of

Study

on

PERFORMANCE

ANALYSIS

OF

VOLTAGE

SOURCE MULTILEVEL INVERTERS

I offer my tributes in terms and gratitude for all the
inexplicable, loving and painstaking care of Mr. Dr
Abu Tariq,

Sr. Lecturer, Department

of Electrical

Engineering. Zakir Husain College of Engineering and

Technology. AMU, Aligarh for his benign and skilful
guidance

throughout

the

course

of

this

study.

remain beholden to his for helping me to visualize

and foresee the bigger picture in the midst of doubts.
I am at a loss of words to express my sense of
gratitude. He devoted considerable time in guiding
and checking my work and made valuable suggestions
and corrections in my draft.

My

thanks

are

also due to all friends

who

have

volunteered themselves to be the part of the present

study. Finally, I express my sincere thanks to one and
all

who

have

directly

or

indirectly

helped

me

in

completing the project successfully.

Dated

Place

INTERODUCTION:

(KHALIQUR RAHMAN)
Aligarh

Inverter is a device that converts DC power into AC power at desired

voltage & frequency. Inverters are used to create single or poly phase AC
voltages from a DC supply. A variable output voltage can be obtained by
varying the input DC voltage& maintaining the gain of the inverter
constant. In addition, if the DC input voltage is fixed and is not
controllable, a variable output voltage can be obtained by varying gain of
the inverter, which is normally accomplished by pulse width modulation
control within an inverter. The inverter gain may be defined as the ratio
of output voltage to dc input voltage.
Ideally output voltage wave form of an inverter should be sinusoidal.
However, the waveform of practical inverter is non sinusoidal and certain
harmonics for low and medium power application square wave or quasi
square wave voltage may be acceptable; but for high power application,
low distorted sinusoidal wave form are required. With the ability of high
speed power semiconductor devices, the harmonic contents of output
voltage can be minimized or reduced significantly by switching
technique.

Classification of inverters

There are different basis of classification of inverters. Inverters are

broadly classified as current-source inverter and voltage-source inverter.
Moreover, it can be classified on the basis of devices used (SCR or gatecommunication devices), circuit configuration (half-bridge or fullbridge), nature of output voltage (square, quasi-square or sine-wave) and
type of circuit (Switch mode PWM or resonant converters), etc.
Current-source inverters (CSI)
This type of inverter is fed by a current source with high-internal
impedance (using current limiting chokes or inductor in series with a DC
source). Therefore, supply current does not change quickly. The load
current is varied by controlling the input DC voltage to the current-source
inverter. CSI are used in very high-power drives.
Voltage-source inverter (VSI)
This type of inverter is fed by a DC source of small internal
impedance. Looking from the AC side, the terminal voltage remains
almost constant irrespective of the load current drawn. Depending on the
circuit configurations, the voltage source inverter may be classified as
half-bridge and full-bridge inverters. Voltage-source inverters may also be
classified as square-wave inverter and pulse-width modulated inverter.

(i)

Square-wave inverter
A square wave inverter produces a square wave ac voltage of a

constant magnitude. The output voltage of this type of inverter can only
be varied by controlling the input dc voltage.
(ii)

Pulse width modulated (PWM)

In a PWM inverter, the output has one or more pulses in each half

cycle. Varying the width of these pulses, the output voltage may be
controlled the magnitude of input dc voltage is essentially constant in this
inverter.
Single-phase, full-bridge, voltage-source inverters
1.1 Single phase full bridge inverter

Fig. 1.1 single phase full bridge inverter

(These voltages wave forms are drawn on the assumption that each
thyristor conducts for a duration its gate pulse is present and is
Commutated as soon as this pulse is removed)

The single-phase, half-bridge inverters require only two controlled

switches and two diodes. These inverters can be used only when threewired dc supply is available. Moreover, the voltage across the off-state
semiconductor device is V, which is double the load voltage. These
drawbacks are removed in full bridge inverters (Fig. 1.1). The inverter
uses two pairs of controlled switches (S1S2 and S3S4) and two pairs of
diodes (D1D2 and D3D4). The devices of one pair operate simultaneously..
For a resistive load, the switch pair S1S2 closes for the time interval
0 < T/2 and the output voltage (vo) becomes + V. At t = T/2, S1S2 pair
turns off and simultaneously, S3S4 pair turns on to make vo = -V.At t = T,
S1S2 pair is again closed to make vo = V and the cycle repeats. By
operating the two switch pairs at the desired frequency, a square-wave ac
voltage is obtained at the output. The load current waveform is also a
square wave with magnitude V/R.
For an RL load, At t=0, the load current is at its negative peak and
its direction cannot reverses instantaneously, due to inductive nature of
the load. The diode pair D 1D2 provides a path for the negative current.
The output voltage becomes positive (+V) and the negative load current
decays to zero at t = tl. During this period, energy is fed back to the
source through the feedback diodes D1 and D2. At t = tl, the diode pair
D1D2 commutates and the switch pair S 1S2, which is already received the

gating signal, turns on. It provides the path for the positive load current.
The load current builds up and reaches its positive peak at t = T/2. At this
instant, the switch pair S1S2 turns off. The positive current continues to
flow for some more time (up to t=t2) through the diode pair D3D4. As the
load voltage is negative, the energy is fed back to the source. At t = t 2,
D3D4 pair commutates and S3S4 pair starts conduction for the negative
load current.
There are two type of switching scheme :
(a) Unipolar switching scheme
(b) Bipolar switching scheme

Unipolar switching scheme: In unipolar switching scheme, the switch

pairs S1S2 and S3S4 of the full-bridge inverter of Fig1.1 are not operated as
pair. Instead, the switches of the first leg i.e. S1 and S4, are operated by
comparing the triangular carrier wave (vc) with the sinusoidal reference
signal (vref). The switches of the other leg i.e. S 2 and S3, are operated by
comparing vc with vref. Following logic is used to operate these switches:
1. If vref > vc, S1 is on and if vref < vc, S4 is on.
2. If vref > vc, S3 is on and if vref < vc, S2 is on.
Here Von and Vbn, are the potentials of the load terminals
A and B, with respect to the reference point N. The waveform for the

unipolar switching scheme, mf = 12 and ma = 0.8, are shown in Fig. 1.2.

It may be observed that the output voltage fluctuates from 0 to +V in the
positive half-cycle and from 0 to V in the negative half-cycle. Thus the
scheme is called unipolar switching scheme.

Fig : 1.2 single phase full bridge inverter

Unipolar switching scheme:

Fig: Switching pulse generator for first leg

Fig: reference signal with carrier wave

Fig: Switching pulse for s1

PWM with bipolar voltage switching:

Performance parameters of inverters

Ideally, an inverter should give a sinusoidal voltage at its output.
However, outputs of practical inverters are non-sinusoidal and may be
resolved into fundamental and harmonic components. Performance of an
inverter is usually assessed with the following performance parameters.
(i) Harmonic factor of nth harmonic
A harmonic factor is a measure of the individual harmonic
contribution in the output voltage of an inverter. It is defined as:
HFn

Vn
V1

Where Vn is the rms value of the nth harmonic component and V 1

is the ms value of the fundamental component of the output voltage.
(ii) Total harmonic distortion (TDH)
A total harmonic distortion is a measure of closeness in a shape
between the output voltage waveform and its fundamental component. It
is defined as the ratio of the rms value of the total harmonic component of
the output voltage and the rms value of the fundamental component.
Mathematically,

THD

n 2 , 3...

V1

2
n

2
Vrms
V12

V1

Where Vrms is the rms value of the output voltage.

(iii)

Distortion factor (DF)

A distortion factor indicates the amount of harmonic that remain in

the output voltage waveform, after the waveform has been subjected to
second order attenuation (i.e. divided by n2).

DF

(V

n 2 , 3...

/ n2 )2

V1

Lowest-order harmonics (LOH)

The lowest harmonic frequency, with a magnitude greater than or
equal to three percent of the magnitude of the fundamental component of
the output voltage, is called the lowest order harmonic. Higher the
frequency of the LOH, lower will be the distortion in the current
waveform.

3.1

Introduction

A cascade multilevel inverter is made up of a series of single phase full

bridge inverters, each with their own isolated dc bus. This multilevel
inverter can generate almost sinusoidal waveform voltage from voltage
from several separate dc sources, which may be obtained from solar
cells, fuel cells, batteries , ultra capacitors, etc. this type of converter does
not need any transformer or clamping diodes or flying capacitors . Each
level can generate three different voltage outputs +VDC , 0 and -VDC by
connecting the dc sources to the ac output side by different combination
of the four switches. The output voltage of the multilevel inverter is the
sum of all of the individual inverter outputs.
A multilevel inverter has four main advantages over the conventional
bipolar inverter.
1. The voltage stress on each switch is decreased due to series connection
of the switches. Therefore, the rated voltage and consequently the total
power of the inverter could be safely increased.
2. The rate of change of voltage (dV/dt ) is decreased due to lower
voltage swing of each switching cycle.
3. Harmonic distortion is reduced due to more output levels.
4. lower acoustic noise and electromagnetic interference is obtained.
Multilevel topologies are able to generate better output quality,
while operating at lower switching frequency. This implies lower

switching dissipation and higher efficiency. Moreover, this topology

utilizes switches with lower breakdown voltage; therefore, it can be used
in higher power applications at lower cost. It is worth mentioning that
although the number of switches in this approach is higher than other two
level topologies, for a sufficient high number of levels, the output filter
can be avoided which means less weight, cost and space. On the other
hand, even with the same size of filter at the output, the switching
frequency can be decreased which means higher efficiency. In general, a
greater number of switches in multilevel converters can be justified since
the semiconductor cost decreases at a much greater rate than the filter
components cost.
Among various multilevel topologies, the simplest and the most
modular topology is CMC. However, the main problem associated with
the CMC topology is the need for isolated DC sources which are not
usually available without the use of transformers. In some specific
applications such as photovoltaic systems, separate dc sources exist and
can be used in the CMC topology. A diversity of multilevel converter
topologies have been used in photovoltaic applications.
There is a new control strategy to control Cascaded multilevel
converters in a multi-string configuration for single phase grid connected
systems. This topology generates high quality output current under any

circumstances specifically in partial shading, while tracking the MPP of

each string independently. The topology does not consist of any extra
DC-DC converter stage which causes some limitation in the performance
but definitely reduces the overall cost and efficiency. Simulation results
are provided to validate the proposed control system.
Basic principle of operation of cascaded multilevel converters
The Cascaded Multilevel Converters (CMC) are simply a number
of conventional two-level bridges, whose AC terminals are simply
connected in series to synthesize the output waveforms. Figure 3.1 shows
the power circuit for a five level inverter with two cascaded cells. The
CMC needs several independent DC sources which may be obtained from
batteries, fuel cells or solar cells.
Through different combinations of the four switches of each cell,
each converter level can generate three different voltage outputs, +V dc, 0,
-Vdc. The AC output is the sum of the individual converter outputs. The
number of output phase voltage level is defined by n=2N+1, where N is
the number of DC sources.

SIMULATION RESULT:

Variation of the current output harmonics with ma

Variation of the current output harmonics with ma

ma=1.0

ma=1

ma=.8

ma=.8

ma=.6

a=.6

m=.4

m=.4

ma=.2

ma=.2