Comparison of Efficiency of Two dc-to-ac

Converters for Grid Connected Solar Applications

H. Blent Ertan Emre Doru Arif Ylmaz
Middle East Technical University
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department
Ankara Turkey
ertan@metu.edu.tr
Tubitak Space Technologies Research Institute
Ankara Turkey
Arif.yilmaz@tubitak.gov.tr
Abstract-In this paper; requirements from grid connected
photovoltaic (PV) converters are briefly reviewed. Traditional
buck-converter, line-frequency transformer topology is taken as
reference, which satisfies all of the requirements imposed by
standards and the utility. However, this topology employs a
bulky transformer. Furthermore, a large electrolytic capacitor is
needed in this circuit, which is expensive and also limits the life
of the converter. This is not desirable in modern applications
where PV module strings, each with its own dc-ac converter and
MPP (maximum power point) tracking are employed or several
strings with their own MPP units producing dc output are
connected in parallel. In the latter application dc output of PV
modules are converted to ac and synchronized to mains via a
common dc-ac converter. Grid connected solar electric
converters may have to operate satisfactorily in islanding mode.
A converter topology, which is capable of operating in voltage
source mode and hence suitable for this mode of operation, is
considered. In this topology, a rectified sinus bus is created using
a buck or boost converter. This stage is followed by an inverter
stage which generates an ac waveform. There is little
information on the efficiency of this topology, which promises to
be cost effective and is likely to have a long lifetime. Both
topologies are implemented and evaluated in this paper. It is
shown that the rectified sinus bus topology can have very high
efficiency (96-97% range) and overall conversion efficiency is
just as good as the traditional topology but with much smaller
size and cost and long operating lifetime.
I. INTRODUCTION
Energy demand in the world is expected to increase from
13934 TWh in 2001 to 24673 TWh in 2025 at an annual rate
of 2.4% [1]. This means that, in approximately 20 years, the
world needs almost twice as much energy. Clearly, this is
quite an alarming situation, indicating that there is need for
incorporating energy sources other than fossil fuels into
energy production cycle. This would be a wise approach also
to avoid environmental pollution problems associated with
fossil fuels. In this context, nuclear energy, wind energy and
solar energy are possible major energy sources that can be
brought in, as solutions to address both of the mentioned
problems. Concerns on producing electricity using nuclear
technology are well known. On the other hand, although
energy production via wind or solar radiation appears very
attractive, in both cases, present technology does not provide
problem free solutions. Wind turbine technology is more
mature at present and is near being an economically viable
solution. Energy production from solar radiation can be
achieved in various ways; using solar cells for producing
electricity is an attractive option. However, this option is still
an expensive solution.
Competitiveness of solar-electric energy production can be
improved by improving the conversion efficiency of solar
cells and improving the efficiency of energy processing
equipment associated with solar cell based electricity
production.
Energy production efficiency from solar cells can be
improved in two different ways. One of these is to make sure
that the solar cells are operated at their optimum operating
point, for a given level of insolation. The other issue is to
make sure that the power conversion equipment has high
efficiency. This paper addresses the second issue.
Before proceeding with the subject matter, it is worthwhile
to review the present power conversion technology. Solar
electric conversion may target a stand-alone application or
may be grid connected. This paper shall concentrate on grid
connected applications.
Solar panels are generally designed to have an output
voltage of about 23-38 V at maximum power point (MPP)
and rated around 160 W at a radiation level of 1000 W/m
2
.
Some years ago, the tendency was to connect these panels in
series and in parallel to obtain the desired voltage and power
level. This was followed by a stage which converted dc to ac.
This stage was also responsible for tracking the maximum
power output and keeping the output synchronized to mains
(single phase or three phase connection). This approach may
be called centralized technology. It is later realized that such
arrangements have limitations due to high voltage dc cables
between PV modules and the inverter, problems with getting
the maximum power output, because of mismatch between
modules, losses on string diodes, etc. [1].
At present it is preferred to have module strings, each with
its own dc-ac converter and MPP tracking (Fig. 1).
Sometimes, several strings with their own MPP units,
producing dc output are connected in parallel as shown in
Fig. 2. The dc output of the PV modules are converted to ac
and synchronized to mains via a common dc-ac converter.
879 978-1-4673-1653-8/12/$31.00 '2012 IEEE
This approach eliminates many of the limitations of
centralized technology.
Alternatively individual panels may be connected to mains
via a dc/ac converter which tracks MPP and converts the dc
output of the module to an ac voltage of appropriate
magnitude. In this case there is no mismatch problem as there
is only a single panel. However the converter is required to
have high gain and because of this, the converter efficiency
may be lower.
A. Demands for Grid Connection
In order to connect the PV generator to the grid,
requirements imposed by the utility operator must be met. At
present the following standards are available; IEC61727 (for
systems less than 10 kW), EN61000-3-2 (for systems rated
less than 3.7 kW) , IEEE1547 (for systems rated less than 30
kW) and NEC690.
These standards define the total harmonic distortion of the
system output, magnitude of current harmonics, power factor,
dc current injection limit, voltage range for normal operation
and frequency range.
Grounding is the other issue discussed in some standards.
Above 100 V, PV system is required to be earth grounded.
Note that, grounding is important for safety, lightning
protection, and electromagnetic pulse protection. However,
this may cause double-grounding problems. Therefore this
issue must be considered in converter design.
B. PV Module and Converter Requirements for Grid Connection
To extract as much energy as possible from the PV system,
it is essential to employ a maximum power tracking scheme.
It is shown in [6] that the voltage ripple causes the system to
operate away from the MPP. As a consequence, the
utilization of the system decreases. It is shown that the
voltage ripple on the output voltage of the PV system should
be below 8.5% in order to achieve a utilization factor of 98%.
It is easy to show that the power output from the converter
terminals is given by (1), considering only the fundamental
component of current and voltage waveforms and assuming
that voltage and current are in phase.
p
g
=2 P
g
sin
2
(w
g
t) (1)
In this equation p
g
is the instantaneous power delivered to
the grid, P
g
is the average power and w
g
is the angular
frequency and t, is time. This equation indicates that the
instantaneous power requirement from the PV system inverter
reaches twice the average power delivered. The power
generated is constant under constant insolation. As a
consequence PV module cannot meet this demand. Therefore,
the converter must have some reserve power to keep the
power demand constant from the PV module. This is an
important issue (called ac decoupling) to consider, while
designing the converter.
Keeping the inverter output in phase with the grid voltage is
another important requirement. Further constraints on the
inverter design arise because of customer requirements, such
as cost effectiveness, long life time. Furthermore, when the
grid fails the system may be required to sense this situation
and either ceases operation or feeds loads connected directly
to the PV system output.
Many converter topologies satisfying the above
requirements fully or partially are reported in the literature
[2]. Some have already found commercial application. When
the literature is investigated it is found that efficiency of the
converters proposed for PV applications range from 80% to
92%. It must be noted that the figures come from
implementations of different authors and designed for
different input voltage levels. For these reasons, it appears
worthwhile to identify what can be achieved with present
technology.
In this paper, efficiency of two different topologies will be
compared. One of these is an early converter topology
satisfying the requirements, and is shown in Fig.3. This
topology has low component count and is known to be
reliable. This topology has no grounding problem and can
operate from a wide range of input voltages. Its major
Fig. 1 A string of PV panels connected to mains
Fig. 2 Alternative PV panel to mains connection
Fig. 3. Buck converter with line frequency transformer
880
disadvantage is the large line frequency transformer and large
capacitors for ac decoupling. This topology has also found
commercial application.
The other topology considered here is based on a totally
different approach. The main idea is to use a dc-dc converter
to obtain a rectified sinus waveform at the output as shown in
Fig. 4. This waveform is then inverted to obtain an ac output,
using a bridge circuit. At the first glance component count
may appear high and one may think that the efficiency of this
circuit is inherently low. However, this is not the case as the
devices in the bridge circuit switch at zero voltage.
In the literature, the first presentation of the idea appears to be
proposed in [3]. The circuit is proposed for an aerospace
application. A breadboard circuit, on which some tests are
made, is mentioned, however, there is little detail on the
performance, other than some output waveforms. The same
idea is taken up in [4], control aspects of the circuit are
considered. Later, a study on the stability analysis of the
circuit is performed [5] and it is shown to operate well with
inductive loads. In both studies the efficiency of the circuit is
not discussed. In [7] the application of this idea for a small
wind turbine is presented. The input voltage level in this
application is low (34-65V, 1kW) and the topology used is
different than the one considered in this study. Conversion
efficiency is reported as 92%. Current controlled versions of
the basic idea also exist in the literature. However, these are
not suitable for operation in islanding mode.
As mentioned earlier for solar applications, efficiency of the
converter electronics is of utmost importance. Energy
produced is directly related to converter efficiency and even a
few percent improvement in efficiency provides economic
advantage. Furthermore, this circuit is suitable for stand-alone
(islanding) operation of the PV system when the system is
disconnected from the mains, because the converter is
operating as a voltage source. In view of these considerations,
it is concluded that it is worthwhile to investigate and
compare the performance of this circuit with the most well-
known and commercially employed circuit given in Fig. 1.
For the comparison a PV string is considered. The PV string
is designed to have 6 BP Solarex, MSX120 model PV
modules. The rated output of the string is 720W at 103 V, at
the maximum power point tracking conditions, at 25 C
ambient temperature, 1000W/m
2
insolation.
The output voltage of a PV string changes depending on the
insolation. In order to inject power to the mains, it is
essential to raise the output voltage level to a value greater
than the peak mains voltage. The boost converter connected
to the output terminals of the PV module in Fig. 4, performs
several functions; i.e. operates the PV modules at MPP,
provides sinusoidal voltage or current at its terminals to
transfer power to mains. Other functions of the converter are
discussed earlier. However, here the focus is on the efficiency
of the converter, while transferring the power. Therefore, this
aspect will be stressed in the following sections.
In the following sections, implementation of both of the
circuits is discussed. Results of the measurements performed
in the laboratory, to find out their efficiency under various
load conditions, are presented.
II. TRADITIONAL BUCK INVERTER WITH LINE
FREQUENCY TRANSFORMER
General layout of the solar system considered in the
evaluation is shown in Fig. 5. The PV array is controlled to
operate at MPP. The control strategy employs intelligent
control, based on a set of expert rules and fuzzy control. Its
operation is described in [8].
Maximum voltage produced by the PV string is 103 V. It is
decided to stop operation of the PV system, when the power
Fig. 6. Block diagram of buck converter line-frequency transformer
topology.
Fig. 4. Rectified sinus dc bus topology
Fig. 5. Block diagram of implemented buck-converter line-frequency
transformer topology
881
produced by the inverter falls to around 50W. The PV string
output voltage at this condition is 80V. Therefore, it is clear
that the inverter should be able to produce at least 220V rms
voltage, while the dc link voltage is varying between the
mentioned levels.
The power stage used for this purpose is shown in Fig. 3.
Block diagram of the converter is given in Fig. 6. Several
issues that must be satisfied by the power stage were
mentioned in the previous section. This topology is capable of
satisfying all of the key requirements.
Electrical isolation is provided by the mains frequency
transformer. Double grounding problems are thus avoided.
Unity power factor operation at the output is possible, THD
can be kept low, ac decoupling is provided by the 3600 F,
250V electrolytic capacitor (Fig. 3).
The MPP tracking algorithm decides the current to be
drawn from the PV string and produces a reference output
current for the inverter. To achieve unity power factor
operation, the inverter is synchronized to mains voltage. The
injected current to mains is kept sinusoidal, using hysteresis
band control. The hysteresis band is chosen to be 20% of the
reference current value. This value is a compromise between
keeping the THD of the current waveform low and having
acceptable switching loss. As will be discussed below, the
ripple frequency of the current is found to vary between 3.5
kHz to18 kHz, depending on the operating conditions. The
high frequency ripple is filtered using an LC filter at the
output of the inverter. The corner frequency of the filter is 4.1
kHz. Before, discussing the performance of the converter, its
design will be discussed briefly.
Four switches of the inverter are IXFH90N20 mosfet
transistors. These are rated at 90A, 200V and have 28 m
turn-on resistance at 25 C. The mosfets have a fast recovery
body diode, which has the same rating as the transistor, with a
typical 350 ns recovery time. Note that the system rated
current is only about 3.5 A. The transistor ratings are chosen
high to achieve low switching loss. There is a 100 nF snuber
capacitor across each transistor to protect the transistors from
undesirable voltage spikes.
The line frequency transformer is designed with turn ratio
of 4.5, so that even at the lowest PV string output voltage,
current can be injected to the mains. The transformer design
has a toroidal core, whose outer diameter is 12.5 cm and
TABLE I
MEASURED POWER LEVELS AT DIFFERENT POINTS FOR VARIOUS TEST CONDITIONS
TABLE II
POWER LOSSES FOR EACH BLOCK AND OVERALL SYSTEM EFFICIENCY IN DIFFERENT EXPERIMENTS.
EFFICIENCY IS GIVEN IN PARENTHESIS.
Ref.Current/
VDCLink
Inverter
Losses
[W]
Inverter
Output
Filter
Losses
[W]
Transformer
Losses
[W]
Overall
System
Loss
[W]
Overall
System
Efficiency
[%]
3A/ 90V 8 (95) 2 (99) 5 (97) 15 91
12A/120V 41(94) 26 (96) 1(99) 68 90
weighs about 4 kg.
Typical output voltage and current waveform of the
designed inverter is shown in Fig. 7. The figure illustrates
that inverter current is in phase with the mains voltage as
designed. Total harmonic distortion (THD) of the mains
current supplied by the inverter is also calculated and is found
to be 5.6%, while the inverter is feeding 570 W. At other
power levels similar values are obtained. Various standards
specify acceptable current harmonic content in different
ways. If IEC61727 is taken as reference, maximum
permissible current THD is 5%. This value can be achieved
easily by adjusting the filter parameters. However, the
emphasis here is on inverter efficiency and adjusting the filter
for less distortion, would hardly have noticeable effect on the
efficiency. For this reason measurements are done, preserving
the existing filter.
Measurements are first performed by operating the inverter,
using a dc power supply, to provide power near minimum and
maximum dc bus levels, the solar string would provide. The
block diagram of the implemented converter is shown in Fig.
6. Power is measured at the output of each stage, so that the
efficiency of the stages can be determined
Some of the measurement results are given in Table 1 and
2. It can be observed that the efficiency of the inverter is
about 97%. Transformer efficiency is around 99% and the
filter loss is about 1%. In view of these results it can be
concluded that the overall conversion efficiency of the
converter is around 90%, for the operating range.
Further measurements are taken while the system is
operating with the solar panels at different insolation levels. It
is observed that the overall efficiency varies in the range 89%
to 93%. Note that these experiments are less reliable than the
ones performed on the laboratory set up, as the insolation
variation may occur as the measurements are taken. These
measurements however, show good agreement with
laboratory designed experiments.
The results obtained on the prototype system are checked
against a commercially available system utilizing the same
Ref.Current/VDCLink
Switch.
Freq.
[kHz]
dclink
[W]
Inverter
Out
[W]
Trasformer
In
[W]
Transformer
Out
[W]
3A/ 90V 10 160 152 150 145
12A/120V 5 656 615 589 588
Fig. 7 Output voltage and current waveforms of the buck converter
line-frequency transformer topology. Output power is 570 W.
882
topology. In this case, only the overall efficiency of the
converter could be measured. Measurements are performed
while this system is connected to the PV string and the
efficiency range is again found to be in the 89-93% range,
indicating that the prototype system is achieving good
performance.
III. RECTIFIED SINUS DC BUS TOPOLOGY
The topology considered is a voltage source topology.
This is preferred here to assure that the PV string continues to
satisfactorily operate in stand-alone mode. The basic block
diagram of one-stage version of this topology is shown in Fig.
4.
AS discussed earlier the PV string voltage is in the 80 V-
103 V range. The boost converter in this topology is
responsible for amplifying the dc input voltage to a level so
that rectified sinus wave with greater magnitude than the
mains voltage can be obtained. The mains synchronized
bridge inverter inverts every other cycle to obtain ac output.
Before discussing the implementation, it is worthwhile to
overview the possibilities this circuit offers. The boost
converter has two tasks; extracting the right amount of power
from the mains so that MPP operation is achieved; secondly,
it is responsible for boosting the input voltage and producing
a half wave rectified output. A further requirement may be to
isolate the PV panels from the output. These tasks can be
achieved either using a single stage topology or by a two
stage topology (as adopted here).
Various single-stage solutions to this problem are possible.
This kind of solution may offer cost and efficiency advantage,
because of fewer switching elements. Some of these are
discussed in [2]. Single-stage solution appears to be more
suitable for low power applications, mainly because of
excessive current stresses on the semiconductor switches.
In case of single-stage inverter, Power injected to the mains
can be controlled by adjusting the voltage reference of the
boost stage. In this kind of application the voltage reference is
calculated considering the current drawn from the PV module
to assure MPP operation. Note that the reference for rectified
sinus dc bus stage has a sinusoidal shape.
Two-stage solutions share the functions expected from the
front stage between two successive stages, as shown in the
block diagram of Fig. 8. In this case the first stage is
responsible for operation of the PV string at MPP, as well as
isolation of the PV from the mains. Furthermore, boosting the
PV voltage to a dc value above peak mains voltage is
achieved by this stage. Isolation may be also achieved by
employing a high frequency transformer topology. In this
approach a wide variation in input voltage can be tolerated.
The second stage in the case of two stage topology is
only responsible to produce a sinusoidal waveform as shown
in the block diagram of Fig. 8. Note that the ripple on the
rectified sinus waveform is at switching frequency of the
switched-mode power supply and the ripple magnitude is
normally very small and additional filter on this bus or at the
output of the inverter stage would not be needed.
In case a two stage boost module is used, the first stage
needs a voltage reference to set the dc bus voltage. Power
drawn from this module is controlled again by adjusting the
reference voltage to the sinus dc bus stage.
An evaluation on the basis of number of switches, suggests
that single-stage solution is likely to be advantageous as far as
the efficiency expectation is concerned. In the literature, for
the topologies considered in this section, efficiency is not
discussed much. As mentioned earlier the only application
known to authors is described in [7] and this is a single-stage
topology. The efficiency is stated as 92%. In this application
there is no electrical isolation between the PV string and
mains.
In the application here, a two stage approach is employed to
test what level of efficiency can be achieved. Besides that,
capability of the circuit to continue operation in islanded
operation is also investigated with inductive and resistive
loads. In addition, response of this topology to load switching
is studied. The implemented topology of the circuit is as
given in Fig. 8. For boosting the PV voltage a commercial
boost converter is used. The rectified sinus dc bus and
inverter stages are designed for the purpose here. Fig. 9
displays the circuit implemented.
A. Design of the Buck Stage
In Fig. 9 the buck converter is responsible for creating a
full-wave rectified dc-dc bus. The topology of the buck
converter would normally employ a diode where IGBT 2 is
used. In the application here this is replaced with a transistor.
This is because, in the simulations, it is observed that the
capacitor C may not follow the reference signal while the
reference magnitude is decreasing following the peak voltage.
This modification also facilitates operation of the circuit
when the system is supplying reactive loads.
Fig. 8. Block diagram of the rectified sinus dc bus topology
Fig. 9.The implemented circuit
883
The operating frequency of the buck converter is chosen as
20 kHz. The switching elements are IGBT and they are rated
at 35 A, 600 V (IXYS). The input voltage of this stage is
chosen as 360V dc, so as to assure a sinusoidal output up to a
mains voltage of about 230 V. It is a simple matter to show
that [9].
I{
s
>
(1 -)R
2
(2)

In (2), f
s
is the switching frequency, D is the duty cycle. To
maintain continuity of current in the worst case, i.e. taking
D=0, and assuming that the converter is supplying 0.8 kW to
a 50 ohm load (corresponds to the case where the converter is
supplying 5A at an average voltage of 200V, while the
inverter output is 220V rms), the minimum value of required
inductance is found as 1.25 mH. In the implementation the
inductor value is taken as 1.9 mH.
The capacitor in the buck circuit should be chosen to keep
the ripple voltage at the desired level. It can be shown that
ripple voltage as a percentage of output voltage is given by

AI
0
I
0
=
(1 - )
8CI{
s
2
(S)

In this expression V
0
is the output voltage of the converter
and V
0
is the ripple magnitude. In the worst case, taking
D=0.86 (peak output voltage/dc bus voltage), The value of
the capacitor is found as 2.3 F. In the implementation a low
loss 12 F capacitor is used.
B. Buck Stage Control
The system control strategy is developed using PSIM and
MATLAB Simulink. Details of the controller will not be
discussed here. The system control is implemented on a
DS1104 development board, which provides plenty of
flexibility.
Sinus reference wave for the buck converter is produced by
the DSP board and the desired value is updated every 50s.
Zero crossing of the reference wave is synchronized with the
mains voltage zero crossings. If the inverter is operating in
isolated condition and supplying power to a local load, the
period is set to produce 50 Hz output voltage. The duty cycle
of the buck converter is adjusted via PI control. The output
voltage is measured every 50s. this value is compared with
the sinus reference wave and an error signal is produced. The
PI controller output voltage is converted to duty cycle and the
DSP generates gate signals to IGBT 1 and IGBT2. To avoid
short circuiting the buck converter input bus, a 3 s dead-time
is introduced between the gate signals of the two IGBTs.
Turn on time of the IGBTs used in the circuit is 75 ns and
the turn off time is 390 s. On the implemented circuit the
dead-time is measured as 1.6 s.
Limits of the duty cycle in the implemented version are set
between 0.06 and 0.92. At the lover limit the voltage
reference is zero. The upper limit is set to reach about 220V
rms value with 360 V dc bus.
C. The Inverter Stage
The inverter switches can be slow switching devices, as
they switch under zero voltage and current conditions and
operate at 50 Hz. The function of the inverter appears to be
simple. However, the strategy adopted is critical on the
harmonic distortion of the output waveform. Note that the
inverse parallel diodes facilitate operation of the inverter,
while supplying inductive loads. Internal diodes of switching
devices can be used for this purpose, as they do not have to be
fast devices.
The strategy adopted for switching at zero crossings is as
follows. The controller monitors the output voltage of the
inverter, when this voltage drops to 36 Volts, gate signals to
all inverter transistors are cut off. As a consequence the load
current circulates over the diodes across the transistors. In the
next computation cycle (50 s later), the output voltage is
assumed to reach zero crossover and the polarity of the
voltage on the load is reversed by turning on transistors T2
and T4. Subsequent zero crossings may occur, due to
oscillations in the buck converter output, before the buck
output voltage actually drops to zero. However, a flag
(variable u) is set so that inverter switch reversal is not
possible until the output voltage magnitude reaches 100V. At
this level, the flag is removed allowing polarity reversal once
again. For this reason inverter switch reversal is not possible
until the output voltage magnitude reaches 100V. At this
level, the flag is removed, allowing polarity reversal once
again. For this reason oscillations of the voltage waveform do
not affect the operation of the inverter switches. As will be
observed from the experimental results, this strategy produces
output voltage distortion, at levels below required by the
standards.
Other possibilities exist to start the polarity reversal;
however, as the voltage distortion requirements are met other
switching strategies are not investigated.
D. Maintaining MPP tracking
To extract maximum available power form the PV panels
operation at MPP is desired. In an earlier paper a novel
method for this purpose was introduced [8]. This approach
determines the current to be drawn from the PV panel. To
assure that the PV current stays at this level a current control
loop is introduced to the system. This loop produces an error
signal, from the difference between the computed PV panel
current and actual PV panel current. This error signal is used
to adjust the magnitude of the reference voltage for the, full
wave rectified dc bus stage.
E. Measurement results
This papers focus is on the efficiency of the converter
topology. For this purpose, several experiments are designed
in the laboratory; some of the results will be presented here.
Since the purpose is to determine the efficiency of the
converter, stand-alone tests are performed on the designed
converter. The points at which measurements are done on the
circuit are shown on the block diagram shown in Fig. 8
A commercial step-up dc-dc converter is used to establish a
360V dc bus. This unit does not have any electrical isolation.
884
The remaining two stages are the prototype circuits described
in the previous sections. The reference voltage for the
rectified dc bus is set to have a 220V rms voltage on the load.
Output voltage and current waves produced by the converter
can be seen in Figs. 10 and 11. The waveforms appear to have
low voltage and current ripple.
Table 3 presents some of the test results obtained while the
converter is operating with restive and inductive loadS. It can
be observed from the table that the output voltage distortion is
less than 5% under all conditions. The distortion mainly
stems from the zero voltage crossing strategy adopted in the
inverter stage. This can be best observed in the output voltage
and current recording given in Fig. 11. The spike observed is
because the inversion takes place 50 s after the cycle voltage
drops to 36 V. Clearly a more sophisticated switching
strategy would solve this problem and reduce the distortion to
even smaller values. It must be noted however that EN 50160
requires supply voltage THD to be lower than 8%, and the
designed converter satisfies this requirement. As for the
TABLE III
MEASURED OUTPUT VOLTAGE DISTORTION OF RECTIFIED SINUS DC BUS TOPOLOGY
Load Resistive Inductive 0.8 lagging
Power (VA) No-load 800 363.5 760.8
Output THD %
4.3 2.05 2.7 4.9
Efficiency
dc bus to ac
output %
---- 97.3 96.8 97.1
current distortion, related standards are easily satisfied (IEC
61727 and IEEE 1547) by the implemented converter.
As shown in Table 3, the rectified dc bus stage and the
inverter have excellent performance. The combined
efficiency of these stages is recorded to be between 96-97%
level throughout the experiments.
The efficiency of the commercial boost stage is measured
to be in the 91-95 % range. Therefore, it can be concluded the
overall efficiency OF THE CONVERTER, from PV to mains is in
the 90-92 % range.
The performance of the converter is also tested while the
resistive and inductive loads are switched in and out. A
typical result is shown in Fig. 11. In this recording 750 VA
load is suddenly switched in. It can be observed that the
switching has no observable effect on the output voltage
waveform.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, efficiency and output voltage distortion of a
promising converter topology are compared with that of buck
converter line-frequency transformer topology. The rectified
sinus dc bus topology is shown to have the same efficiency as
the reference topology. On the other hand, this topology
offers many advantages the reference topology cannot meet.
For example, the current ripple is very small. Furthermore,
the voltage ripple is also very small and since the rectified
sinus dc bus topology considered here, can operate in voltage
control mode, it can safely operate, when the PV system is
islanded. Therefore the system can continue to supply local
loads. In case a boost stage with high frequency isolation is
used, double grounding problems can be avoided.
The ac decoupling problem is solved here by using a
capacitor at the 360V dc bus. Because of this, the size of the
capacitor is about 1/3
rd
in size, as compared to the reference
topology, which uses a 3500F, 250 V, capacitor, across the
PV panel. This promises a much longer lifetime for the new
converter.
Another advantage of the topology considered here is that; a
bulky transformer is not needed. The advantage of this circuit
is not only in comparison with the reference topology; its
efficiency is as good as the highest recorded in the literature,
amongst many studied circuits. Also, it can be implemented
in a small volume. In view of the advantages discussed above,
it can be concluded that this approach to solar electric
conversion is worth further investigation.
Fig. 10. Output voltage and current waveforms of the solar-electric
converter, while supplying 800 W to a resistive load
Fig. 11 Inductive 750 VA load switch in. (lower magnitude trace is
recorded current) 0.8 lagging at 50 Hz
885
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the support
provided by NATO (collaborative Grant No: 960339),
TUBITAK BILTEN and by TUBTAK (Turkish Scientific
and Technological Research Institute) under project code
105053.
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