The use of multilevel converters has increased significantly owing to their advantages in high-voltage and high-power applications. Balancing of the DC capacitor in the neutral-point clamped (NPC) topology is a main concern in these converters. The DC voltage must be maintained at its reference value to avoid overvoltage stress on the semiconductor and to overcome modulation distortion. This paper presents a new method of regulating the DC voltage of a back-to-back NPC five-level converter applied in a wind energy conversion system based on doubly fed induction generator. The proposed control algorithms consist of two loops: the outer closed loop controls the average value of the DC voltage, whereas the inner loop controls the difference between the two voltages in each half-arm using a clamping bridge circuit. To verify the validity of the method and to prove the performance of the proposed control algorithms, simulation was carried out in a MATLAB Simulink environment. The results obtained show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.