SINGLE PHASE MULTILEVEL INVERTER FOR GRID-TIED PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEMS

• Main Author: Prichard, Martin Edward
• Format: Others
• Published: UKnowledge 2015
• Subjects: Multilevel Inverter; Microinverter; Grid-tied Photovoltaic Systems; Low Power Solar Energy; Reversing Voltage Topology; Power and Energy
• Online Access: http://uknowledge.uky.edu/ece_etds/81; http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=ece_etds

Multilevel inverters offer many well-known advantages for use in high-voltage and high-power applications, but they are also well suited for low-power applications. A single phase inverter is developed in this paper to deliver power from a residential-scale system of Photovoltaic panels to the utility grid. The single-stage inverter implements a novel control technique for the reversing voltage topology to produce a stepped output waveform. This approach increases the granularity of control over the PV systems, modularizing key components of the inverter and allowing the inverter to extract the maximum power from the systems. The adaptive controller minimizes harmonic distortion in its output and controls the level of reactive power injected to the grid. A computer model of the controller is designed and tested in the MATLAB program Simulink to assess the performance of the controller. To validate the results, the performance of the proposed inverter is compared to that of a comparable voltage-sourced inverter.