Independent Upper- and Lower-Arm Switching Scheme Based on Reference Current Polarity for Three-Level NPC Inverters

This study presents a novel switching scheme for three-level neutral point clamped (NPC) inverters. The proposed switching method independently drives the upper- and lower-arm elements of the inverter based on the polarity information of the reference current. The proposed switching scheme does not require the inclusion of dead-time for each switching, except when the current polarity changes. Therefore, unlike the conventional inverter switching method, dead-time compensation is not needed, and the possibility of an arm-short accident is prevented. In this study, a switching procedure is detailed, and the operation mode analysis of the proposed switching scheme is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed switching method is verified experimentally by application to a grid-connected inverter that requires inverter current control.