Harmonic minimization in a modified cascaded multilevel inverter for islanded microgrid using two switching techniques

Abstract

Renewable energy sources are playing very wide role for their abundant availability. Photovoltaic systems are widely used for their cleanliness and less maintenance. Multilevel inverter technology has become an emerging technology with renewable energy sources and are playing a wide role in designing various topologies. In this paper, an islanded microgrid from a remote area fed from solar PV system through a modified topology of 7 level 6 switches cascaded H bridge multilevel inverter using two different switching tecniques are presented. A solar photovoltaic (PV) system and an energy storage is fed through DC-DC boost converter which is equipped with incremental conductance maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm to extract maximum solar energy is considred in the islanded microgrid. A comparison of Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) switching techniques which leads to the improvement of total harmonic distortion (THD) for power quality applications is carried out. Due to modified topology reductions in the number of power switches, losses are obtained. To verify the performance of the switching techniques simulations are carried out using MATLAB/SIMULINK and the total harmonic distortion is calculated.