Implementation of Solar Photovoltaic System using Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Inverter with Reduced Switch Count

An Excessive number of power sources present in standard architectures can be reduced in the present thirteen-level multilevel inverter with a single-phase photovoltaic system. Existing inverter designs are complicated logic control, bigger in size, and have more losses due to high-frequency switching. To overcome these drawbacks, the new proposed design houses a single full-bridge stage and only five bidirectional switches, controls the circuit, minimizing component cost, and improves overall efficiency. In cascaded H-Bridge arrangements, several full bridges are incorporated, whereas in the proposed circuit, only thirteen discrete voltage levels from +Vdc to –Vdc in little increments are obtained by combining outputs from the full bridge and the bidirectional devices. These arrangements give a waveform that is almost sinusoidal, thereby minimizing Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), enhancing power quality, and removing the burden on filtering. Simulation validations conducted in MATLAB/SIMULINK and PROTEUS compare output waveforms, switching losses, and harmonic spectra. The results provided that the prototype gives clean, grid-compatible AC power with low THD and lower switching losses, proving that it is a promising prototype for efficient, grid-tied solar installations.