The Need for Inverters and Their Application Areas

Inverters 1
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Inverters 2
Introduction
An inverter can be generally defined as a device that transforms DC power into AC
power or DC power from one level to another (dc-dc conversion) (Rashid, 2010). However,
the term is used more specifically to define devices that convert dc to ac power. Despite the
fact that the inverters operate on dc power sources as the input, this dc power is sometimes
derived from ac supply, for example from the utility ac source (Rashid, 2010). This ac power
is first converted into dc power using rectifiers after which it is fed to the inverter.
The need for inverters and their application areas
Inverters are very useful devices and find applications in many electrical and
electronic applications. In the power generation industry, inverters are used in solar and wind
power generating stations to convert the direct current from storage batteries into alternating
voltage, for instance, for connection to the grid. They are also used in High Voltage DC
(HVDC) power transmission systems to convert the transmitted power back to ac.
Multilevel inverters
The rising use of high power, high voltage apparatus in many industrial applications has
led to the development of multilevel inverters. These are inverters that generate stepped
voltage waveforms using an array of power semiconductors in conjunction with capacitor
voltage sources (Colak, Kabalci, & Bayindir, 2011). The higher the number of steps (levels)
in a multilevel inverter, the more the steps in the output waveform. Multilevel inverters offer
several benefits over their conventional counterparts. These include,
i) They are capable of generating an output voltage with very low distortion and low
dv/dt stress