Voltage Source Multilevel Inverters with Reduced Device Count: Topological Review and Novel Comparative Factors

Multilevel inverters (MLIs) have gained increasing interest for advanced energy-conversion systems due to their features of high-quality produced waveforms, modularity, transformerless operation, voltage, and current scalability, and fault-tolerant operation. However, these merits usually come with the cost of a high number of components. Over the past few years, proposing new MLIs with a lower component count has been one of the most active topics in power electronics. The first aim of this article is to update and summarize the recently developed multilevel topologies with a reduced component count, based on their advantages, disadvantages, construction, and specific applications. Within the framework, both single-phase and three-phase topologies with symmetrical and asymmetrical operations are taken into consideration via a detailed comparison in terms of the used component count and type. The second objective is to propose a comparative method with novel factors to take component ratings into account. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by a comparative study.