The total harmonic distortion (THD) of inverter output voltage, power loss due to high-frequency switching, and dc-link capacitor voltage balancing are considered as the major research concerns for neutral point clamped (NPC) inverter-based solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, which are largely affected by the pulse width modulation (PWM) scheme. This work proposes an improved voltage balancing discontinuous PWM (DPWM) scheme for reducing the inverter output voltage THD and power loss with balanced DC-link capacitor voltages compared to existing discontinuous PWM schemes.