A Novel Quadruple Boost Reduced Component Nine-Level Inverter with Self-Balancing Capability

In medium and high-power applications, multilevel inverters have gained popularity because of their capacity to synthesize output voltages with reduced harmonic distortion and device stress. However, conventional multilevel inverters suffer from drawbacks such as large component counts, complex control, and capacitor voltage imbalance. This paper presents a novel nine-level inverter topology with quadruple boost and inherent self-balancing capability while minimizing the number of component count. Utilizing only 8 switches, 3 diodes, and 2 capacitors, it produces nine-level output voltage. The capacitor voltage is systemically added to the input DC voltage source to boost the output voltage. The self-balancing property maintains equal capacitor voltages automatically through symmetrical charging-discharging cycles. A low switching-frequency based optimum nearest level modulation (ONLM) technique is applied to enhance the power quality. The topology is modeled and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink under resistive and inductive loads. Results demonstrate a boosted output voltage four times higher than the input DC source, and a total harmonic distortion of 8.90% without any filter. With a properly designed LCL filter, the THD drops to 1.24% conforming IEEE standard. The superiority of the proposed circuit was compared with that of other recently published studies. The proposed inverter is well suited for renewable energy integration, electric vehicles, and stand-alone power conversion applications.