Improved power cell bypass method and apparatus for multilevel inverter

摘要

Multilevel inverters, power cells and bypass methods are presented in which a power cell switching circuit (140) is selectively disconnected from the power cell output, and a bypass (S2) which is closed to connect first and second cell output terminals (104A,104B) to selectively bypass a power stage (100) of a multilevel inverter (40), with an optional AC input switch (S3) to selectively disconnect the AC input (108) from the power cell switching circuit (140) during bypass.