A novel reconfigurable multilevel inverter with preserved output power

Continuous power supply is indeed indispensable for consumers’ electronic equipment in diverse sectors such as household, industry, and critical categories. It provides essential protection against power shortages to ensure uninterrupted operation for loads. In this paper, a novel nine-level inverter is proposed with the fault-tolerant (FT) characteristics to provide the continuous power supply during various switch faults. The proposed fault-tolerant multilevel inverter (FT-MLI) can tolerate both open circuit (OC) and short circuit (SC) faults in single and multiple switch failures with preserved output power. Furthermore, a novel switching technique has been devised that eliminates the requirement for an external circuit in order to minimise the capacitor size by reducing capacitor voltage ripple (CVR) and preserve capacitor voltage balance in both pre- and post-failure scenarios. Numerous simulation and experimental tests are conducted to confirm the efficacy of the proposed FT-MLI topology. A quantitative evaluation against recent topologies is provided. Finally, it has higher efficiency at pre- and post-fault scenarios due to fewer conductive switches.