Lecture Three - Review of DC-AC Inverters

Addis Ababa Science and Technology University
Advanced Power Electronics and Applications: ECEg 6294
Lecture Three
Review of Switch-Mode DC-AC Inverters
College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
DC to AC INVERTERS
Outline
• Introduction
• Basic Concepts of Switch-Mode Inverters
• Single-Phase Inverters
• Three-phase Inverters
• Effect of Blanking on Output Voltage in PWM
Inverters
• Other Inverter Switching Schemes
• Rectifier Mode of Operation
2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 3

Inverters
 DEFINITION: Converts DC to AC power by switching the DC
input voltage (or current) in a pre-determined sequence so as
to generate AC voltage (or current) output whose magnitude
and frequency can both be controlled.
 TYPICAL APPLICATIONS: Un-interruptible power supply
(UPS), Industrial (induction motor) drives, Renewable energy
interfaces, Traction, HVDC, Adjustable speed drives (ASDs),
static var compensators, active filters, flexible ac transmission
systems (FACTS), and voltage compensators, which are only a
few applications.
 General block diagram is shown below
i
idc ac
+
= Vac
Vdc ~
-
Block Diagram
Principle of inversion
 The basic principle of VSI is shown in fig 3a and CSI is in fig.3 b
For 0<t< - S1 – ON
-S2 – OFF
 <t<2- S2- ON
-S1-OFF
Switch S can be any of
controlled power switch
Fig.3.a
depending on power &
switching frequency
Types
by out put phase no. – 1-ph & 3-ph
by out put wave form – sine wave and square wave
in put feed – voltage source (VSI) fig.3.a and current
source (CSI) fig.3b
Motor Drive
• As an example, consider an ac motor drive, shown in Fig. 3-1 in a block
diagram form.
50/60Hz
Figure 3-1
• Block diagram of a motor drive where the power flow is unidirectional

Motor Drive
• Such a reversible-current two-quadrant converter can be realized by
two back-to-back connected line-frequency thyristor converters by means of a switch-
mode converter as shown in Fig. 3-2.
Figure 3-2 Switch-mode converters for

motoring and regenerative braking in ac
motor drive.
• Block diagram of a motor drive where the power flow can be bi-directional
•According to the type of the load nature, Inverter topologies can be considered as
1. voltage source inverters (VSIs)
2. current source inverters (CSIs) – used with capacitive load where di/dt spikes
become very high.
NB: VSI structures are the most widely used because they naturally behave as
voltage sources as required by many industrial applications, such as adjustable
speed drives (ASDs), which are the most popular application of inverters; 7
2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters
Motor Drive…
• The input to switch-mode inverters will be assumed to be a dc voltage
source, as was assumed in the block diagrams of Fig. 3-1 and 3-2.
• Such inverters are referred to as voltage source inverters (VSIs).
• The other types of inverters, now used only for very high power ac motor
drives, are the current source inverters (CSIs), where the dc input to the
inverter is a dc current source and they have limited applications
Fig.3.23
2/19/2023 8
Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters
Voltage Source Inverters (VSIs)
 Note that in VSI the out put voltage is square wave but current wave shape depends on load type,
where as in CSI the out put current is square shape and voltage wave form depend on the load types
 VSI is the most common used type as an inverter.
• The VSIs can be further divided into the following three general categories:
1. Pulse-width-modulated inverters.
• In these inverters, the input dc voltage is essentially constant in magnitude, such as
in the circuit of Fig. 3-1, where a diode rectifier is used to rectify the line voltage.
• Therefore, the inverter must control the magnitude and the frequency of the ac
output voltages. This is achieved by PWM of the Inverter switches and hence such
inverters are called PWM inverters.
• There are various schemes to pulse-width modulate the inverter switches in order to
shape the output ac voltages to be as close to a sine wave as possible with a scheme
called the sinusoidal PWM.
2. Square-wave inverters.
• In these inverters, the input dc voltage is controlled in order to control the magnitude
of the output ac voltage, and therefore the inverter has to control only the frequency
of the output voltage.
• The output ac voltage has a waveform similar to a square wave, and hence these
inverters are called square wave Inverters. 9
Voltage Source Inverters (VSIs)…
3. Single-phase inverters with voltage cancellation.
• In case of inverters with single phase output, it is possible to control the magnitude
and the frequency of the inverter output voltage, even though the input to the
inverter is a constant dc voltage and the inverter switches are not pulse-width
modulated (and hence the output voltage waveshape is like a square wave).
• Therefore, these inverters combine the characteristics of the previous two inverters.
• It should be noted that the voltage cancellation technique works only with single-
phase inverters and not with three-phase inverters.
• For sinusoidal ac outputs, the magnitude, frequency, and phase should be
controllable.
Voltage source inverter. Current source inverter.

Simple square wave inverter.
Single-phase half-bridge VSI.
Single phase Full-Bridge VSI
DC-link Inverters (ASD-appl.)
11
AC Waveform Generation (Single phase Full-bridge VSI Inverter)
S1,S2 ON; S3,S4 OFF

S3,S4 ON ; S1,S2 OFF
S2
VDC
12
AC Waveforms
Harmonics Filtering
13
…
• Output of the inverter is ―chopped AC voltage with
zero DC component‖. It contain harmonics.
• An LC section low-pass filter is normally fitted at
the inverter output to reduce the high frequency
harmonics.
• In some applications such as UPS, ―high purity” sine
wave output is required. Good filtering is a must.
• In some applications such as AC motor drive,
filtering is not required.
14
BASIC CONCEPTS OF SWITCH-MODE INVERTERS
• a single-phase inverter is shown in block diagram form in Fig. 3-3a, where the
output voltage of the inverter is filtered so that vo can be assumed to be
sinusoidal.
• Since the inverter supplies an inductive load such as an ac motor, io will lag
vo, as shown in Fig. 3-3b.
• The output waveforms of Fig. 3-3b show that during interval l, vo and io are
both positive, whereas during interval 3, vo and io are both negative.
• Therefore, during intervals 1 and 3, the instantaneous power flow po (=voio) is
from the dc side to the ac side, corresponding to an inverter mode of operation.
• In contrast, vo and io are of opposite signs during intervals 2 and 4, and
therefore po flows from the ac side to the dc side of the inverter, corresponding
to a rectifier mode of operation.
• Therefore, the switch-mode inverter of Fig. 3-3a must be capable of operating
in all four quadrants of the io—vo plane, as shown in Fig. 3-3c during each
cycle of the ac output.
15
BASIC CONCEPTS OF SWITCH-MODE INVERTERS…
• Four quadrants of operation
Figure3-4: One-leg switch-mode inverter.

Figure 3-3 Single-phase • The mid-point shown is fictitious 16
switch-mode inverter. Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters
PULSE-WIDTH-MODULATED SWITCHING SCHEME
• A PWM of full-bridge dc—dc converters discussed earlier, there is a control signal
vcontrol (constant or slowly varying in time) was compared with a repetitive switching
frequency triangular waveform in order to generate the switching signals.
• Controlling the switch duty ratios in this way allowed the average dc voltage output to
be controlled.
• In inverter circuits, the PWM is a bit more complex, since as mentioned earlier, we
would like the inverter output to be sinusoidal with magnitude and frequency
controllable.
• In order to produce a sinusoidal output voltage waveform at a desired frequency, a
sinusoidal control signal at the desired frequency is compared with a triangular
waveform, as shown in Fig. 3-5a.
• The frequency of the triangular waveform establishes the inverter switching frequency
and is generally kept constant along with its amplitude

PWM SWITCHING SCHEME…
• When defining terms used with PWM:
• The triangular waveform vtri in Fig. 3-5a is at a switching frequency fs, which
establishes the frequency with which the inverter switches are switched (L is
also called the carrier frequency).
• The control signal is used to modulate the switch duty ratio and has a frequency
fl, which is the desired fundamental frequency of the inverter voltage output (fl
is also called the modulating frequency), recognizing that the inverter output
voltage will not be a perfect sine wave and will contain voltage components at
harmonic frequencies of fl.
• The amplitude modulation ratio ma is defined as
3.1.
• Where, Vcontrol is the peak amplitude of the control signal.

• The amplitude of the triangular signal is generally kept constant.
18

Figure 3-5 Pulse-width modulation.
• The frequency modulation ratio my is defined as 3.2.

• In the inverter of Fig. 3-5b, the switches TA+ and TA- are controlled based on the
comparison of vcontrol and vtri, and the following output voltage results, independent of the
direction of io:
3.3.
Or
• Since the two switches are never off simultaneously, the output voltage VAo fluctuates
between two values (1/2Vd and -1/2Vd).
• Voltage VA0 and its fundamental frequency component (dashed curve) are shown in
Fig. 3-5b, which are drawn for mf=15 and ma = 0.8.
• The harmonic spectrum of under the conditions indicated in figs. 3-5a and 3-5b
is shown in Fig. 3-5c, where the normalized harmonic voltages (VA0)h/ 1/2Vd having
significant amplitudes are plotted.
21
Variable Voltage Variable Frequency Capability
• Output voltage frequency

can be varied by ―period‖
of the square-wave pulse.
• Output voltage amplitude
can be varied by varying
the ―magnitude‖ of the DC
input voltage.
• Very useful:
e.g. variable speed
induction motor drive
22
Output voltage harmonics/distortion
• Harmonics cause distortion on the output voltage.
• Lower order harmonics (3rd, 5th etc) are very difficult to filter, due
to the filter size and high filter order. They can cause serious
voltage distortion.
• Why need to consider harmonics?
– Sinusoidal waveform quality must match supply.
– ―Power Quality‖ issue.
– Harmonics may cause degradation of equipment. Equipment need
to be ―de-rated‖.
• Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) is a measure to determine the
―quality‖ of a given waveform.
23
Total Harmonics Distortion (THD)
24
Fourier Series
• Study of harmonics requires understanding of wave shapes.
• Fourier Series is a tool to analyse wave shapes.
25
Harmonics of square-wave
26
Cnd…
27
Spectra of square wave
Spectra (harmonics) characteristics:
– Harmonic decreases with a factor
of (1/n).
– Even harmonics are absent
– Nearest harmonics is the 3rd.
• If fundamental is 50Hz, then
nearest harmonic is 150Hz.
– Due to the small separation
between the fundamental and 3rd
harmonics, output low-pass filter
design can be very difficult.
28
Quasi-square wave (QSW)
29
Harmonic control
30
Half-Bridge Inverter
• Also known as the ―inverter leg‖.
• Basic building block for full bridge,
three phase and higher order inverters.
• G is the ―centre point‖.
• Both capacitors have the same value.
Thus the DC link is equally ―spilt‖
into two.
• The top and bottom switch has to be
―complementary‖, i.e. If the top switch is
closed (on), the bottom must be off,
and vice-versa.
31
Shoot through fault and ―Dead-time‖
• In practical, a dead time as

shown below is required to
avoid ―shoot-through‖
faults, i.e. short circuit
across the DC rail.
• Dead time creates ―low
frequency envelope‖. Low
frequency harmonics
emerged.
• This is the main source of
distortion for high-quality
sine wave inverter. 32
Example
• A full - bridge single phase inverter is fed by

square wave signals. The DC link voltage is
100V and the load is R, 10R.
Calculate :
a) the THDv by using the first three non - zero
harmonics.
b) Repeat (a) for quasi - square wave case with
α = 30 degree
33
Harmonic Spectrum
• 1. The peak amplitude of the fundamental-frequency component (VA0)1 is ma times
1/2Vd. This can be explained by first considering a constant Vcontrol as shown in Fig.
3-6a. This results in an output waveform vAo.
• Regarding the PWM in a full-bridge dc—dc converter, it can be noted that the average
output voltage (or more specifically, the output voltage averaged over one switching time
period Ts = l/fs) VAo depends on the ratio of Vcontrol to for a given Vd:
3.4.
3.6b.
3.4
34
2/19/2023
Harmonic Spectrum…
3.5.
Where
2/19/2023
Fig.3.6 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 35
3.4 3.5 &
3.6.
3.7.

2. The harmonics in the inverter output voltage waveform appear as sidebands,
centered around the switching frequency and its multiples, that is, around
harmonics mf, 2mf, 3mf, and so on.
• This general patter holds true for all values of ma in the range 0—l.
• For a frequency modulation ratio mf<= 9 (which is always the case, except in
very high power ratings), the harmonic amplitudes are almost independent of
mf, though mf defines the frequencies at which they occur.
• Theoretically, the frequencies at which voltage harmonics occur can be
Indicated as
3.8.

8.1
3.8.
3.4
3.9
3.10
3.1 3.7
8.1
3.5

Table 3.1

Example 3.1 3.4
3.1
3.1
3.11
40
Selection of the Switching Frequency
• The selection of the switching frequency and the frequency modulation ratio mf.
• Because of the relative ease in filtering harmonic voltages at high frequencies, it is
desirable to use as high a switching frequency as possible, except for one
significant drawback: Switching losses in the inverter switches increase proportionally
with the switching frequency fs.
• Therefore, in most applications, the switching frequency is selected to be either less
than 6 kHz or greater than 20 kHz to be above the audible range.
• If the optimum switching frequency (based on the overall system performance) turns out
to be somewhere in the 6—20-kHz range, then the disadvantages of increasing
it to 20 kHz are often outweighed by the advantage of no audible noise with fs of 20 kHz
or greater.
• Therefore, in 50 or 60-Hz type applications, such as ac motor drives (where
the fundamental frequency of the inverter output may be required to be as high as 200
Hz), the frequency modulation ratio mf may be 9 or even less for switching frequencies
of less than 2 kHz.
• On the other hand, mf will be larger than 100 for switching frequencies higher
than 20 kHz.
• The desirable relationships between the triangular waveform signal and the
control voltage signal are dictated by how large mf is.
• In the discussion here, mf = 21 is treated as the borderline between large and small,
though its selection is somewhat arbitrary. Here, it is assumed that the amplitude 41
modulation ratio ma is less than 1.
3.5a

• In the previous discussion, it was assumed that ma <=1.0, corresponding to
a sinusoidal PWM in the linear range.
• Therefore, the amplitude of the fundamental-frequency voltage varies
linearly with ma, as derived in Eq. 3-7.
• In this range of ma<=1.0, PWM pushes the harmonics into a high-frequency
range around the switching frequency and its multiples.
• In spite of this desirable feature of a sinusoidal PWM in the linear range,
one of
the drawbacks is that the maximum available amplitude of the fundamental
frequency component is not as high as we wish.
• This is a natural consequence of the notches in the output voltage waveform
of Fig. 3-5b.
• To increase further the amplitude of the fundamental frequency component
in the output voltage, ma is increased beyond 1.0, resulting in what is called
overmodulation.
• Overmodulation causes the output voltage to contain many more harmonics
in the side bands as compared with the linear range (with ma 1.0), as shown
in Fig. 3-7.
• The harmonics with dominant amplitudes in the linear range may not be dominant during
overmodulation.
• More significantly, with overmodulation, the amplitude of the fundamental-frequency
component does not vary linearly with the amplitude modulation ratio
ma.
• Figure 3-8 shows the normalized peak amplitude of the fundamental-frequency com-

3.7
• These are harmonics of the fundamental frequency

3.8
• Shows the linear and the over-

modulation regions; square-wave
operation in the limit
Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 46

2/19/2023
• The overmodulation region is avoided in uninterruptible power supplies because
of a stringent requirement on minimizing the distortion in the output voltage.
• In induction motor drives, overmodulation is normally used
• For sufficiently large values of ma, the inverter voltage waveform degenerates
from a pulse-width-modulated waveform into a square wave, which is
discussed in detail in the next section.
• From Fig. 3-8 and the discussion of square-wave switching to be presented
in the next section, it can be concluded that in the overmodulation region with
ma > I
3.12

3.4
3.9a
3.13
And 3.14
• where the harmonic order h takes on only odd values, as shown in Fig. 3-9b.
• It should be noted that the square-wave switching is also a special case of the sinusoidal
PWM switching when ma becomes so large that the control voltage waveform intersects
with the triangular waveform in Fig. 3-5a only at the zero crossing of Vcontrol
• Therefore, the output voltage is independent of ma in the square-wave region, as shown in
Fig. 3-8.

• One of the advantages of the square-wave operation is that each inverter switch
changes its state only twice per cycle, which is important at very high power levels
where the solid-state switches generally have slower turn-on and turn-off speeds.
• One of the serious disadvantages of square-wave switching is that the inverter is not
capable of regulating the output voltage magnitude.
• Therefore, the dc input voltage vd to the inverter must be adjusted in order to control
the magnitude of the inverter output voltage.
3.9
Harmonics are of the fundamental frequency
2/19/2023 49
• Capacitors provide the mid-point

3.15
And
3.16

• A full-bridge inverter is shown in Fig. 3-11.
• This inverter consists of two one-leg inverters of the type discussed in before and is
preferred over other arrangements in higher power ratings.
• With the same dc input voltage, the maximum output voltage of the fu11 bridge inverter
is twice that of the half-bridge inverter.
• This implies that for the same power, the output current and the switch currents are one-
half of those for a half-bridge inverter.
• At high power levels, this is a distinct advantage, since it requires less paralleling of
devices.
• Consists of two inverter

legs

2/19/2023 54
Analysis assuming Fictitious Filters
• For simplicity, fictitious L-C high-frequency filters will be used at the dc side as well as
at the ac side, as shown in Fig. 8-13.
• The switching frequency is assumed to be very high, approaching infinity.
• Therefore, to filter out the high-switching-frequency components in vo and i d, he filter
components L and C required in both ac- and dc-side filters approach zero.
• This implies that the energy stored in the filters is negligible. Since the converter itself
has no energy storage elements, the instantaneous power input must equal
the instantaneous power output.
• Having made these assumptions, vo in Fig. 8-13 is a pure sine wave at the fundamental
output frequency ω1 ,
• Small fictitious filters eliminate the switching-frequency related ripple

• In practical systems, the previous assumption of a constant dc voltage as the input to the
inverter is not entirely valid.
• Normally, this dc voltage is obtained by rectifying the ac utility line voltage.
• A large capacitor is used across the rectifier output terminals to filter the dc voltage.
• The ripple in the capacitor voltage, which is also the dc input voltage to the inverter, is due
to two reasons:
• (I) The rectification of the line voltage to produce dc does not result in a pure dc
• (2) the current drawn by a single-phase inverter from the dc side is not a constant dc but
has a second harmonic component (of the fundamental frequency at the inverter output) in
addition to the high switching-frequency components.
• The second harmonic current component results in a ripple in the capacitor voltage,
although the voltage ripple due to the high switching frequencies is essentially negligible.

DC-Side Current
• Bi-Polar Voltage switching

Output Waveforms: Uni-
polar Voltage Switching
• Harmonic components
around the switching
frequency are absent
The waveforms of Fig. 8-15 show that there are four combinations of switch on-states
and the corresponding voltage levels:

And

2/19/2023 68
DC-Side Current in a Single-Phase Inverter
• Uni-polar voltage switching

Sinusoidal Synthesis by Voltage Shift
• Phase shift allows voltage cancellation to synthesize a 1-Phase sinusoidal output

And

Single-Phase Inverter
• Analysis at the fundamental frequency

Push-Pull Inverter
• Low Voltage to higher output using square-wave

operation
Three Phase Inverter
 The ac voltage produced by 1-ph inverter is a poor version of
sine wave and also not suitable for industrial 3-ph supply.3-ph
inverter my be implemented for example with six switches.
- To obtain 3-ph voltage switches can be triggered in two ways
of conducting modes, viz., 180o mode of conduction and 120o
mode of conduction
- In 180o mode of conduction switches in the same arm (leg)
conduct for 180o and in each interval (60o) 3 switches ON.
- In 120o mode of operation switches in the same group conduct
after 120o and in each interval 2 switches conduct.
Three Phase Inverter - cont-ed
Three Phase Inverter - cont-ed
Three-Phase Inverter
• Three inverter legs; capacitor mid-point is fictitious

Three-
Phase
PWM
Waveforms
Three-Phase Inverter: Square-Wave Mode
• Harmonics are of the fundamental frequency

Chapter Four: Resonant Converters

Lecture Three - Review of DC-AC Inverters

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Addis Ababa Science and Technology University

Advanced Power Electronics and Applications: ECEg 6294

Review of Switch-Mode DC-AC Inverters

College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 3

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 6

Figure 3-2 Switch-mode converters for

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 10

Single phase Full-Bridge VSI

DC-link Inverters (ASD-appl.)

S1,S2 ON; S3,S4 OFF

• Four quadrants of operation

Figure3-4: One-leg switch-mode inverter.

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 17

• Where, Vcontrol is the peak amplitude of the control signal.

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 19

Figure 3-5 Pulse-width modulation.

• The frequency modulation ratio my is defined as 3.2.

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 20

• Output voltage frequency

• In practical, a dead time as

• A full - bridge single phase inverter is fed by

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 36

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 37

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 38

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 39

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 42

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 44

• These are harmonics of the fundamental frequency

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 45

• Shows the linear and the over-

Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 46

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 47

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 48

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 51

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 52

• Consists of two inverter

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 53

• Small fictitious filters eliminate the switching-frequency related ripple

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 59

• Bi-Polar Voltage switching

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 63

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 64

• Uni-polar voltage switching

• Phase shift allows voltage cancellation to synthesize a 1-Phase sinusoidal output

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 71

• Analysis at the fundamental frequency

• Low Voltage to higher output using square-wave

• Three inverter legs; capacitor mid-point is fictitious

• Harmonics are of the fundamental frequency

2/19/2023 Chapter Three_ DC-AC Switch-Mode Inverters 87

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