Abstract
The usage of non-conventional power sources like photovoltaics and wind, which are of a typical low-voltage type, often requires more than one power converter stages for enhancing their adaptability. A voltage booster is one among such inevitable stages. The same is with the electric vehicles (EVs) which are regarded as future general road transportation means. This paper presents a novel three-phase three-level inverter topology with single DC source that is devoid of additional boosting circuitry for a grid-interactive EV infrastructure. The envisaged structure is composed of seven switches and one capacitor per phase. The voltage boosting is based on series and parallel connection of the capacitor with the input DC source. The operation of the proposed topology is deliberated in detail through its switching states and a simple look-up table is developed for the generation of the switching pulses. The merits of the proposed topology in terms of number of switches, number of diodes and number of capacitors are presented through a detailed comparative study. Finally, experimental results obtained from a scaled hardware prototype are presented to validate the operability and feasibility of the proposed topology.