Design, analysis, and validation of fault-tolerant switched-capacitor based ANPC multilevel inverter topology

• A detailed Fault analysis of the different multilevel topologies has been carried out, which shows that the output voltage becomes zero for recently proposed inverter topologies in case of failure in a single switch. • Based on the analysis, a new fault-tolerant topology with a boosting feature and ANPC configuration has been proposed. • A detailed analysis regarding the power quality has been carried out to show the effect of various faults on the performance of MLI topology. • A loop inductor has been used for the reduction of the charging current, which has been one of the main issues related to the Switched Capacitor based inverter topologies. • Simulation and experimental results have been provided to validate the proposed topology for different operating conditions. The reliability of power converters is always a key concern when designing new systems. In this paper, a new Fault-Tolerant Active Neutral Point Clamped (FT-ANPC) converter has been introduced. Under normal conditions, this converter produces a seven-level output voltage using six unidirectional switches and three bidirectional ones. To ensure its robustness, the converter performs when open-circuit faults (OCFs) occur, which has been analyzed, focusing on the impact of each switch. The converter is controlled using a carrier-based modulation technique. The proposed FT-ANPC converter has been tested in normal operation and under fault conditions to validate its performance. Power quality in different scenarios has also been evaluated using MATLAB.