A New Reduced Switch-Count Configuration for Regenerative Cascaded H-Bridge Converter

Addition of regenerative capability in high power motor drives have become essential to increase energy efficiency of these systems. To have economic regenerative cascaded H-bridge motor drive, reduction of its switch count has gained the research attention recently in order to have more suitable-sized and more economical drives. This paper proposes a new reduced switch-count power cell configuration for regenerative cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converters. In this cell, four-switch three-phase inverter (FSTPI) is used as the active front-end rectifier instead of the conventional six-switch three-phase inverter. Four-switch three-phase inverter is a common economic solution for the low voltage drives. The proposed cell configuration performance is verified by simulation of a reduced switch-count nine-level CHB. The simulation studies are based on a motor load with both motoring and regeneration operations. The results proves the CHB drive with proposed cell configuration to exhibit promising performance and can offer a cost-effective reduced-switch count regenerative CHB drives.