Mohammad Yousefzadeh - Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Birjand, Iran
Mehrald Ahmadi Kamarpashti - Department of Electrical Engineering, Jouybar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran

Nowadays, multi-level inverters (MLIs) are gaining huge popularity due to their variousadvantages in high power Photovoltaic applications. This paper investigates moderntopology of multilevel inverters, which are suitable to be used in high power photovoltaicapplications with the main target on achieving lower total harmonic distortion and betterefficiency. Multilevel inverters offer several advantages compared to conventional types.Multilevel inverters provide high quality output while using the low switching frequency.It affects the switching losses, size of semiconductor switches and harmonic filters. Thisresearch investigates various topologies of multilevel inverter for high power photovoltaicapplications and compares their THD, efficiency, number of required semiconductors andother important characteristics. All topologies are simulated using MATLAB/Simulink inthe same operating conditions. Finally, the more suitable multilevel topology is chosenwith reference to the simulation results.

Multilevel inverter, Photovoltaic, high power application, THD