International Journal on Electrical Engineering and Informatics - Volume 13, Number 1, March 2021 Selective Harmonic Eliminated Pulse Width Modulation (SHE-PWM) Method using Genetic Algorithm in Single-Phase Multilevel Inverters Satilmis URGUN 1 and Halil YIGIT 2 1 Kocaeli University Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Kocaeli, Turkey 2 Kocaeli University, Technology Faculty, Information Systems Engineering, Kocaeli, Turkey urgun@kocaeli.edu.tr, halilyigit@kocaeli.edu.tr Abstract: Numerous techniques have been used in the literature to produce switching signals in multilevel inverters (MLIs). Reducing the number of switching component in multilevel inverters is another area of interest in the literature. In this paper, a MLI with low switching number has been designed and worked successfully in harmonic elimination method. For this purpose, a novel genetic algorithm based SHE-PWM in a single phase 11-level inverter is presented in order to eliminate the switching signals. Also, total harmonic distortion (THD) analysis, which depends on switching angles for multilevel inverters, in a wide modulation range of 11-level inverter topology is presented. Hence, the switching angles are first estimated by Genetic Algorithm (GA) method, in which a certain number of harmonic components are eliminated. THD analysis is performed using both analytical and MATLAB simulation using calculated switching angles. The proposed method is applied to an 11-level inverter to eliminate 3th, 5th, 7th and 9th harmonic content in the range of modulation index 1.5 and 4. A simulink model which provides simulating and validating the accuracy, dynamics and continuity of the GA solution, was created. Experimental validation is not carried out in this study. Considering the simulation results and similar studies in the literature, the success of the reduced inverter topology and GA supported harmonic elimination technique was observed. Keywords: Inverters; genetic algorithm; pwm; power conversion harmonics; harmonic distortion 1. Introduction In recent years, multilevel inverters have been widely used due to its high efficiency, high voltage operation and low electromagnetic interference (EMI) in parallel with the developments in technology. In general, two basic strategies are considered in multilevel inverters. The first is the use of pulse width modulation (PWM) techniques to improve the output signal quality. Secondly, synthesizing of a large number of direct voltage (DC) sources to obtain high voltage. In the literature, there are various PWM techniques, such as traditional PWM, space vector PWM, sub-harmonic PWM, switching frequency optimum PWM, and selective harmonic elimination (SHE) PWM [1, 2]. In the SHE-PWM method, numerical techniques, which includes Newton Raphson, Groebner Bases and Symmetric Polynomial Theory, were used to solve nonlinear Fourier Transforms [3, 4]. This method finds the optimum point by derivative and ends at the local optimum point. It can only guarantee the result when selecting a suitable starting point. There are many multilevel inverter (MLI) topologies that are examined. Programmable PWM in multilevel inverters was applied to SHE method in [5]. Active harmonic elimination (AHE) method, which eliminates any number of high order harmonics of multilevel inverters using equal or unequal DC-voltage sources, was introduced in [6]. A new modulation technique, which combines the SHE method with Optimized Harmonic Stepped Waveform (OHSW) technique, is put forward in [7]. In [8], the SHE method using Walsh transformations was applied to a 7-level 3-phase classical multilevel inverter. Total harmonic distortion (THD) analysis was performed for MLIs of different levels in [9]. When the number of levels increase, it is stated that although the circuit complexity increases, the modulation index falls. In multilevel inverter, Memetic Algorithm (MA) is used to eliminate Received: November 11 st , 2019. Accepted: March 22 nd , 2021 DOI: 10.15676/ijeei.2021.13.1.11 191