A Cascade Multilevel Inverter Using a Single DC Power Source

A method is presented showing that a cascade multilevel inverter can be implemented using only a single DC power source and capacitors. A standard cascade multilevel inverter requires n DC sources for 2n + 1 levels. Without requiring transformers, the scheme proposed here allows the use of a single DC power source (e.g., a battery or a fuel cell stack) with the remaining n-1 DC sources being capacitors. It is shown that one can simultaneously maintain the DC voltage level of the capacitors and choose a fundamental frequency switching pattern to produce a nearly sinusoidal output.