Z Packed U-cell (ZPUC) topology, configuration of single DC Source single-phase and three-phase Multilevel Converter

Single module of ZPUC topology is presented in this paper which can be operated with single DC source. Although ZPUC has one more capacitor compared to its counterpart PUC converter, it requires single DC source instead of three isolated DC sources in three-phase system which is a great advantages to reduce the cost and bulkiness of the system. It also reduces the total components counts of the converters in comparison to the most popular types of multilevel converters. Active voltage balancing through Phase shift pulsed width modulation (PS-PWM) strategy has been used to balance the voltages of three flying capacitors. ZPUC topology based on the 5-L inverter is investigated in Matlab-Simulink to validate the performance of the single module of ZPUC topology.