International Journal of Applied Power Engineering (IJAPE) Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2023, pp. 1~12 ISSN: 2252-8792, DOI: 10.11591/ijape.v12.i1.pp1-12  1 Journal homepage: http://ijape.iaescore.com A novel PWM technique for reduced switch count multilevel inverter in renewable power applications Rakesh Shriwastava 1 , Sonali Gosavi 1 , Shridhar S. Khule 1 , Somnath Hadpe 1 , Mohan P. Thakare 2 1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Matoshri College of Engineering and Research Center, Nashik, India 2 K. K. Wagh Institute of Engineering Education and Research, Nashik, India Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Sep 2, 2022 Revised Jan 1, 2023 Accepted Jan 21, 2023 This paper described a novel pulse width modulation (PWM) technique in reduced switch count multilevel inverter (MLI) for renewable power applications. Therefore, the proposed technique finds a better solution in the multilevel inverters used for improving power quality, efficiency and reduction of switching and conduction losses. It produces a smoother sinusoidal output waveform with reduced total harmonic distortion (THD) using different modulation technique. The novel PWM technique consists of nearest level control (NLC) and level shift pulse width modulation (LSPWM). Normally semiconducting devices are added for increasing number of levels. It affects the power quality and efficiency due to losses. In this work, MLI topology with reduced number of switches count for NLC and LSPWM is presented. The single-phase and three-phase inverter configuration is used in proposed mythology. Detailed simulation results for 7-level inverter of single and three-phase inverters are presented in this paper. It is observed that NLC method is better efficiency and reduced THD than LSPWM for better utilization in renewable power applications. Keywords: Level shift pulse width modulation Multilevel inverter Nearest level control Renewable energy sources Single-phase inverter Total harmonic distortion This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Rakesh Shriwastava Department of Electrical Engineering, Matoshri College of Engineering and Research Center Nashik, Maharashtra 422105, India Email: rakesh_shriwastava@rediffmail.com 1. INTRODUCTION Many grid-connected inverters have rarely investigated to utilization with renewable energy sources (RES) of energy. For the grid connection and the micro grid connected unit, several multilevel inverters (MLIs) have been successfully investigated [1]–[5]. The multilevel inverter is currently recommended for (L/M VA) applications applications without transformers and filters, as well as high-voltage (HVA) applications with a high-frequency transformer [6]. International regulations enable L/M VAs to operate in the absence of galvanic isolation; on the other hand, high voltage application necessitates the high frequencies transformers for isolation purposes [7]–[9]. High-frequency transformers are significantly smaller and lighter than fundamental frequency transformers. As a consequence, transformer less system are frequently used to describe multilevel inverters using the high-frequency transformers. In multilevel inverter, as output voltage levels increases the required filter requirement is decrease. As a consequence, today's multilevel inverters with higher output levels may operate without a filter or a transformer for low, medium and high VA and grid integration. As a result, system’s following parameters such as overall volume; size and the weight of the system are remarkably reduced [3], [10], [11]. In addition, as output voltage levels reduced in MLIs, the filter need reduces [12]. Consequently, recent, multilevel inverters with higher output voltage levels may operate not only filter less but also transformer less in low, medium, and high VA grid integration applications. This results in a significant