Cover
Vol. 22 No. 1 (2026)

Published: June 15, 2026

Pages: 450-455

Original Article

A Multilevel Inverter with Fewer Switches Using Boost Converter for Solar PV Applications

Khalid M. Abdulhassan 1 Osama Y. K. Al-Atbee 1 Rawnag A. Habeeb 1
1 Electrical Engineering Department, University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq
History
  • Received: October 3, 2024
  • Revised: June 26, 2025
  • Accepted: July 6, 2025
  • Available Online: June 15, 2026
DOI

https://doi.org/10.37917/ijeee.22.1.39

Abstract

To support medium-voltage and high-power applications in flexible power systems, multilevel inverters, which are commonly referred to as MLIs, are currently being developed. The conventional configuration of a multilevel inverter, which aims to accommodate a wide range of applications, necessitates the use of additional switches and sources and is subject to certain constraints. Through the built-in control of the boost converter and the PWM for each level, this research aims to discover a new method that uses a boost converter to obtain an MLI with a minimum number of switches, maintaining this number constant as the number of levels increases. The research results clearly demonstrate the reduction of THD to small values through the use of the boost converter in the proposed method. MLI is usually used in renewable energy applications to obtain certain voltages, for example, from solar cells, therefore, simulations were conducted within the framework of photovoltaic (PV) cells as an input source. When MLI configuration integration is added to a PV system, a lower number of switching components are used for a defined number of voltage output levels. This is in contrast to typical multilevel inverter topologies, which require a larger number of switching components to manage the gating pulse of PV-based MLI. The MATLAB/SIMULINK program assisted in carrying out this work.

Keywords

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