Study of Neutral Point Potential Variation for Three-Level NPC Inverter under Fault Condition

Three-level Diode Clamped Multilevel Inverter, generally known as Neutral-Point-Clamped (NPC) Inverter, has an inherent problem causing Neutral Point (NP) potential variation. Until now, in many literatures NP potential problem has been investigated and lots of solutions have also been proposed. However, in the cases of fault and fault tolerant control state, distinctive feature of NP potential variation was rarely published from the standpoint of reliability. In this paper, NP potential is analytically investigated both normal and fault conditions under carrier based PWM. Subsequently, relation between fault detection time and size of capacitor is analyzed. This information is explored by simulation results, which contribute to enhance the reliability of inverter system.