Novel asymmetric/symmetric half-cascaded multilevel inverter for photovoltaic based shunt active power filter to mitigate power quality issues

Photovoltaic (PV) technology has been recently developing and upgrading with regard to the rapid and high request from various agricultural, domestic and industrial electric power systems. Due to feasibility and reliability of Multi-Level Inverter (MLI), it can be effectively implemented in the photovoltaic systems. The large number of switches used in the MLIs is their main drawback which leads to lack of cost-effectiveness and high Total Harmonic Distortion (THD). In this paper, a novel Asymmetric/Symmetric Half-Cascaded MLI (ASHC-MLI) which contains low number of switches is proposed to attain a cost-effective structure. After that, PV panels have been used as power sources of this structure to construct the overall Shunt Hybrid Active Power Filter (SHAPF) for mitigating the power quality problems. To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the proposed ASHCMLI, it has been compared with the prominent and inventive MLI structures in both asymmetric and symmetric statuses. Meanwhile, the understudy power system has been affected by different current distortions so that the harmonic elimination capability of the proposed SHAPF can be well revealed. The evaluation analysis has been simultaneously performed for the conventional active power filter to appropriately validate its harmonic elimination capability.