Implementation of an 11-Level Inverter for Sea Water Battery System

An inverter is an electronic power device used to convert DC voltage to AC. With the increase in power conversion technology, the latest inverter designs are also increasing. One developing design is designed for multilevel models. Multilevel design is a combined inverter design where the output voltage will be divided into several levels and form a sinusoidal curve. In this paper, multilevel inverters will be connected to sea water battery output and implemented in the fishing boat. The sea water battery inside the boat has several functions. Aside from being a supply for resistive-inductive (RL) load in the cooling system, the battery also functions as a supply of communication and lighting systems. This is what requires the importance to reduce and even eliminate the harmonic index, because it will have an impact on the amount of losses generated and the interference that can be generated. To overcome the problem of the magnitude of the harmonic index on conventional inverters without using filters, this paper will propose an 11-level inverter design. The proposed 11-level inverter construction will be designed and simulated with PSIM software. Where the proposed load uses resistive load (used in communication and lighting system) and RL load (used in motor cooling in a fishing boat). The result obtained indicate that 11 levels of inverter can reduce the level of current and voltage harmonics better than conventional inverters. In addition, this inverter shows a better Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) index, although it does not use a filter with a reduction in the average harmonic index of 85% from a conventional inverter.