Optimization of the Voltage Total Harmonic Distortion in Multilevel Inverters by Using the Taguchi Method

Abstract

A critical reduction in the total harmonic distortion in the output voltage of multilevel inverters can be obtained with an appropriate selection of the angles to switch the power semiconductors at low frequency. Among the methods used to obtain the required sequence of angles, it is possible to recognize both standard and optimized methods, like the Newton–Raphson method or the genetic algorithm, to mention a few. However, implementing the genetic algorithm implies using several configuration parameters, so it is difficult to know if the best option was chosen. This paper implements the Taguchi design of experiments, the Taguchi method, to obtain the appropriate switching angles for an multilevel inverter producing an output voltage of five and seven levels. Experimental results obtained from a laboratory prototype using the computed angles in the MATLAB GA solver demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.

Keywords

• multilevel inverters
• genetic algorithms
• Taguchi design of experiments
• total harmonic distortion