In over modulated low voltage cascaded multi-level converters are subjected to power imbalance problems. The scheme of reactive power control is used to maintain the cascaded multilevel inverter under power imbalanced conditions. Several approaches like apparent power sharing and reactive power sharing schemes are used to improve the over modulation issues in cascaded multilevel inverters. This study looks at an optimization reactive power control method to address the excessive modulation issue in order to reduce the overall reactive power needed. An improved minimum reactive power control scheme is implemented in an active power imbalanced multilevel inverter. The performance of the inverter was validated with an apparent and reactive power sharing control method. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.