This research article proposes a five-level switched inductor-based cascaded H-bridge quasi-switched boost inverter (SL-qSBI) for renewable energy applications (REA) based on ripple input current-based SLBI topology. The switching pulses are generated using phase-shifted triangular carrier sinusoidal modulation (PS-PWM) strategy. The input DC voltage of 36 V is boosted and inverted to 155 V peak AC load voltage. The stiff DC source is considered for understanding the modes of operation of the inverter topology proposed. The simulation is performed in MATLAB/Simulink environment, and the simulated waveforms are presented to validate the operation of this topology. In addition, the performance of five-level cascaded H-bridge switched inductor-based qSBI (SLBI) is compared with the conventional five-level qSBI topology. © 2020, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.