Selective harmonic elimination for cascade modular multi-level inverters using GA and GWO algorithms

Nowadays, the study of methods to control the inverter by applying optimization algorithms to eliminate selective harmonics (Selective Harmonic Elimination (SHE)) is attracting more and more attention of researchers. These studies are divided into two directions: evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence, in which genetic algorithm (GA) represents the group of evolutionary algorithms, and one solution recently appeared is the gray wolf algorithm (Grey Wolf Optimizer: GWO) which represents the group of swarm intelligence algorithms. When applied to the SHE problem for the inverter, these algorithms show positive results. However, there has not been an evaluation of both time and total harmonic distortion (THD) over the entire range of modulation index between the two methods GA and GWO when applied to multi-level inverters. Therefore, the article gives detailed evaluations in terms of time and harmonics of the above methods to see the advantages and limitations of each algorithm on each segment of the modulation ratio to the modular 11 -levels cascade inverter. Modular multi-levels cascade inverter is simulated by Matlab/Simulink software to verify GA and GWO control algorithms.