A novel direct control of high performance bidirectional quasi-Z-source inverter (HPB-QZSI), with optimized controllable shoot-through insertion, to improve the voltage gain, efficiency and to reduce total harmonic distortion is investigated. The main drawback of the conventional control techniques for direct current to alternating current (DC-AC) conversion is drawn from the multistage energy conversion structure, which implies complicated control, protection algorithms and reduced reliability due to the increased number of switching devices. Theoretically, the original Z-source, Quasi-Z-source, and embedded Z-source all have unlimited voltage gain. Practically, however, a high voltage gain (>2 or 3), will result in a high voltage stress imposed on the switches. Every additional shoot-through state increases the commutation time of the semiconductor switches, thereby increasing the switching losses in the system. Hence, minimization of the commutation time by optimal placing of the shoot-through state in the switching time period is necessary to reduce the switching loss. To overcome this problem, a combination of high performance bidirectional quasi-Z-source inverter with a sawtooth carrier based sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) in simple operation condition for maximum boost control with 3rd harmonic injection is proposed. This is achieved by voltage-fed quasi-Z-source inverter with continuous input current, implemented at the converter input side which can boost the input voltage by utilizing the extra switching state with the help of shoot-through state insertion technique. This thesis presents novel control concepts for such a structure, focusing mainly on the control of a shoot-through insertion. The work considers the derivation and application of direct controllers for this application and scrutinizes the technical advantages and potential application issues of these methodologies. Based on the circuit analysis, a small signal model of the HPB-QZSI is derived, which indicates that the circuit is prone to oscillate when there is disturbance on the direct current (DC) input voltage. Therefore, a closed-loop control of shoot-through duty cycle is designed to obtain the desired DC bus voltage. The DC-link boost control and alternating current (AC) side output control are presented to reduce the impacts of disturbances on loads. The proposed strategy gives a significantly high voltage gain compared to the conventional pulse width modulation (PWM) techniques, since all the zero states are converted into shoot-through states. The simulated results verify the validity and superiority of the proposed control strategies.