INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ELECTRONICS, COMMUNICATION AND COMPUTATIONAL ENGINEERING - ICECCE 2014

Leakage Current Suppression For Transformerless

Inverter For Grid Connected PV Power Systems
S.Ayswarya(P.G Scholar),
Dept of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
V.S.B Engineering College,
Karur- 639111, Tamilnadu, India.
aysh091@gmail.com

P.Prabu M.E,
Assistant proffesor,
Dept of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
V.S.B Engineering College,
Karur-639111, Tamilnadu,India.
pprabueee@gmail.com

AbstractDue to the driving worldwide environmental

demand for the renewable energy resources the photovoltaic
power market in the recent years experiences certain
amount of the innovations regarding the construction and
the operation of the inverter connected to the grid. One such
significant development, is that the abolition of the galvanic
isolation due to the absence of the transformer which causes
safety threats in the event of ground faults. This results in
the development of the transformerless CSI inverter which
experiences reduced cost, higher efficiency, smaller size and
weight. But the use of the CSI injects high earth leakage
current into the grid the leakage current generated between
the PV panels and the ground. In order to overcome the
aforementioned limitations, this paper deals with the
effective solution to anticipate the CM ground leakage
current using the transformerless Modified Current Source
Inverter (MCSI) for grid connected photovoltaic power
system.
By the use of Maximum Power Point
Tracking(MPPT) control technique and SEPIC converter
desired output from PV to the inverter is achieved. This
advance topology can be modulated using Space Vector
Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) to produce the reduced
output ripple. The experimental results show the
performance of the proposed solution in terms of ground
leakage current reduction and the experimental studies are
analyzed using MATLAB simulation.

traditional energy sources such as oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro,

and wind[2]-[4]. In several situations, the PV inverters are used
to feed the DC power into the utility grid. It is necessary for the
PV inverter to be of high efficiency, because of the relatively
higher price of the solar PV panels [5]. Small size of inverter
with reduced cost and the three phase system is now gaining
advantage especially when the inverters are installed indoor and
used for low power applications. In the early days utilizing
traditional grid-connected PV inverters, either a line frequency
or a high-frequency transformer is utilized, which provides a
galvanic isolation between the grid and the PV panels. This
results in decrease in efficiency ,increase in size , weight and
cost because of the use of the isolation transformer (see Fig. 2)
[6].

IndexTermsCommon Mode (CM) leakage current,

photovoltaic(PV) system,
transformerless Modified Current
Source Inverter (MCSI) , Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation
(SVPWM) ,Total Harmonic Distortion(THD).

Removing the usage of the isolation transformer can be

an effective solution to increase the efficiency and reduce the
size and cost (see Fig. 1). However, when the transformer is
omitted, the Common-Mode (CM)ground leakage current may
appear on the parasitic capacitor between the PV panels and the
ground [7], [8].Usually the ground leakage current is imposed on
the line current; which results in higher harmonic in inverters
without the transformer. In the transformerless grid-connected
circuit which includes the capacitance between PV and the
ground, the L-C filters, the MCSI inverter, and the impedance
(Z) of the required utility grid. The voltage magnitude of the

I. INTRODUCTION
Photovoltaic (PV) power supplied to the utility grid is gaining
more and more development, while the worlds power demand
is increasing . Not many PV systems have so far been placed
into the grid due to the relatively high cost, compared with more

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Fig.1. Ground current in a PV transformerless inverter

connected to the grid

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capacitance depends on given dc PV source and the surrounding

environmental conditions. Here the solar PV panels ground
capacitance is very high ranging from nanofarads (nF) up to
microfarads (F) [9], [10]. This is because PV panel structure
resembles a huge capacitor, in which one electrode is the PV
cells and the other one is the ground frame (see Fig. 1). Due to
this the ground current is generated which reaches a higher value
and it is becoming an important issue in transformerless inverter
and it should be anticipated. Due to the CM ground leakage
current it results in reduced the power conversion efficiency,
increase the grid current distortion, deteriorate the electric
magnetic compatibility (EMC), and above, this it give rise to
the safety threats.

Fig.2. Grid-connected photovoltaic generation system with an

isolation transformer
(a) Line frequency transformer
(b)High-frequency transformer
Usually existing solar inverter are using VSI topology,
which requires large value of capacitance to reduce the ground
leakage current and also they suffers due to the problems of
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). But due to the
development of the CSI in the present PV applications focus the
advantage of longer operational life and have Maximum Power
Point Tracking (MPPT) efficiency when compared to the
voltage source inverter. Also the CSI because of the use of
small value of the DC capacitance and DC inductor together the
reduced dc ripple voltage have added additional advantage.
Sometimes in CSI due to the generation of the Common Mode
(CM) voltage which induces higher leakage current. For the
purpose of human safety and the EMI compatibility the
Common Mode (CM) ground leakage current should be less

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than 300 mA and the complete PV system must be disconnected

in 0.3 s as per DIN VDE 012-1-6 standards for PV applications
connected to the grid. Thus, the fluctuations in the potential
between the PV array and ground give rise to capacitive leakage
current and these currents can cause grid current distortion and
losses in the system Therefore Modified Current Source Inverter
(MCSI) is proposed in this paper to overcome the above
limitations . It eliminates the presence of the higher frequency
component in the common mode voltage , thereby anticipating
the common mode leakage current . Thus by using this advanced
transformerless CSI topology the fluctuations PV systems and
the grid are effectively reduced and grid current distortion and
EMI losses are suppressed effectively. The maximum power is
tracked using(MPP) Tracker [11]. The SPEIC is used to boost
the voltage to the required level to the inverter[12]. The use of
Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) CSI for grid connected PV
applications are suggested in [13]. The proposed inverter can
be modulated with the Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation
(SVPWM) technique.
In this paper, the disadvantages of the existing system
which performs cost effective inversion operation by Voltage
Source Inverter (VSI) is discussed in Section II, and Section III
explains the topology of the proposed Current Source Inverter
(CSI) and its merits over voltage fed inverters are discussed
Section IV focus the benefits of the proposed current source
inverter utilizing SEPIC converter for the purpose of producing
non-inverted boosted output of same polarity as the input
voltage and in , Section V depicts the issues related to common
mode(CM) voltage and leakage current in conventional PWMCSI and how we overcome /suppress the CM voltage and the
leakage current by using modified current source inverter and in
Section VI , the need for the Space Vector Pulse Width
Modulation technique used for the analysis of the proposed CSI
inverter are discussed. Section VII includes the simulation
study, and the results.
II. THE E XISTING M ETHOD
Usually solar PV inverters uses Voltage Source Inverter
(VSI) topology [3][5]. While considering the higher current
ripple absorbed/ supplied by the dc-link capacitor in VSI, larger
value of capacitance is needed to limit the output voltage ripple
across solar PV terminals. Therefore the utilization of the VSI
when compared to CSI may not be economically efficient.
Also, voltage source based solar inverters will have dont have
longer operational life as compared to current source based solar
inverters. Even though VSI high reliability, solar PV inverter
should possess higher efficiency conversion of power. But the
existing, solar PV string voltages are small ;and therefore, the
need additional dc-dc boost converter or ac transformer is used
along with VSI. Since size of the capacitor is directly
proportional to the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) .
But in VSI another important issue is their reduced size of the dc

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capacitor which reslts in higher (switching) frequency ripple

voltage on the dc bus increases, which results in reduced MPPT
efficacy [8].
III. THE PROPOSED M ETHOD
In this paper the current source inverter (CSI) topology,
is used where the dc-link inductor reduces the ripple in dc
current to a very low value . Therefore, current absorbed /
supplied by the capacitor has lower ripple due to additional the
dc-link inductor which has current smoothing action. And also
CSI requires smaller dc-link capacitor, thereby increasing the

use of highly reliable capacitor (see Fig. 3). Even though the
CSI has integrated boost functionality and therefore does not
require an additional component for voltage boosting. But for
increasing its efficiency additional components mainly SPEIC
converter is used in this paper . In summary the CSI offers high
reliability at almost the same efficiency as compared to that of
voltage source based solar inverter. The proposed inverter can
be modulated with the space vector pulse width modulation
(SVPWM) technique which can be used for several PV
application.

Fig. 3. Proposed current source based transformer-less solar inverter

IV. THE SEPIC CONVERTER
The Single Ended Primary Inductance Converter
(SEPIC) is a DC/DC-converter methodology which provides a
positive regulated output voltage from the PV input voltage
which varies from higher to lower output voltage. The electrical
potential (voltage) at its output to be greater than, less than, or
equal to that at its input; the output of the SEPIC is controlled
by the duty cycle of the control transistor. It is a boost converter
followed by a buck-boost converter, having advantage of noninverted output (the output has the same voltage polarity as the
input), using a series capacitor to couple energy from the input
to the output (and thus can respond more gracefully to a shortcircuit output), and being capable of true shutdown: when the
switch is turned off, its output drops to 0 V, i.e during transient
faults. The SEPICs are useful in applications in which a battery
voltage can be above and below that of the regulator's intended
output. In the continuous mode, the current through the inductor
L1 never falls to zero and the average current through inductor
L2 (IL2) is the same as the average load current and hence
independent of the input voltage. In discontinuous-conduction
mode, the current through the inductor L1 is allowed to fall to
zero. Since by coupling the two inductors in a SEPIC converter
together, which resembles a Flyback converter, the most basic

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ideology of the transformer-isolated SMPS topologies. A SEPIC

is said to be reliability and efficient since the diode's switching
time is extremely fast it does not generate high voltage spikes
across the inductors, which prevents the damage of the
components.in SEPIC fast conventional diodes or Schottky
diodes may be used. The resistances in the inductors and the
capacitor have large effects on the converter efficiency and
ripple. Inductors have lower series resistance allow less energy
to be dissipated as heat, resulting in greater efficiency.
Capacitors with low Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR) is used
to minimize ripple and prevent heat build-up, in C1 where the
current is changing direction frequently.
The simple circuit diagram of a SEPIC converter, in
Fig. 5. consisting of an input capacitor, CIN ; an output capacitor,
COUT; coupled inductors L1a and L1b; an AC coupling capacitor,
CP; a power FET, Q1; and a diode, D1.(see Fig. 5) which shows
the SEPIC operating in continuous conduction mode (CCM). Q1
is on in the top circuit and off in the bottom circuit. D(max)
occurs at VIN(min), and D(min) occurs at VIN(max).
The duty cycle, D ,for a SEPIC converter operating in
CCM is given by,
D=
where VFWD is the forward voltage drop of theSchottky diode.

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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ELECTRONICS, COMMUNICATION AND COMPUTATIONAL ENGINEERING - ICECCE 2014

This can be rewritten as ,

=

(2)

D(max) occurs at VIN(min), and D(min) occurs at V IN(max).

Fig. 5. Proposed SPEIC converter

V. THE MODIFIED CURRENT SOURCE INVERTER
The proposed MCSI is shown in fig. 2. where the PV
modules is connected across the input capacitors and the dc-link
are realized by two capacitors, which are connected in series.
The midpoint of these capacitors are connected to the grids
neutral . The dc-link inductors ldc1 and ldc2 are wound around the
same core resulting a high value of mutual coupling across them.
The above topology consist of a eight semiconductor switching
devices to generate ac current from the input DC current. Each
semiconductor switching device has unidirectional current flow
capability and therefore they block the reverse voltage. Here
either the Reverse Blocking (RB) IGBTS or a diode connected
in series with IGBT are used to realize these switches. The
output of three phases are connected through capacitorinductor
(CL) filter to the grid and the fourth leg of the proposed MCSI
is connected to the neutral of the system as shown in fig. 2.The
role in anticipating the earth leakage current by using the
components of the proposed inverter are discussed below.
A. Common Mode Inductor
The common mode (CM) earth leakage current is of
common mode nature and it flows across the positive and
negative terminals of the dc-link. Therefore, in order to suppress
this leakage current, common mode (CM) inductor
is
connected between the +ve and ve dc-link and this inductor
gives high impedance to the earth leakage current and finally
reduces its magnitude to a lower value. But unfortunately, this
addition of the inductor does not condense the Common Mode
(CM) voltage completely.
B. Split Capacitor DC-link
Split capacitor dc-link is visualized by connecting the
two dc capacitors in series and the midpoint of this link is

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connected to the neutral. During the operation of the topology,

the dc-link voltages vdc1 and vdc2 are maintained constant.
Therefore the potential difference between the solar PV
terminals and neutral is a constant dc value eliminating the
presence of the high-frequency ac. since the neutral earth point
is grounded at the substation, the voltage across the cp1 and cp2
are almost dc and not high-frequency ac. the result is that no
high-frequency leakage current would flow the circuit. This split
capacitor dc-link technique is used in VSI topology, and this
arrangement is used to eliminate the leakage current. In CSI, this
arrangement would results in the undesirable leakage currents
the reason for this behavior is explained in the following section
and is reduced using Modified Current Source Inverter(MCSI).
C. Fourth Leg
The entire cycle is divided into six sectors. in the
sector-1, current reference for phase-A and phase-C is + ve and
that for phase-b is ve and to realize these reference currents,
the switches SA+, SA-, SB+, SB-, SC+, and SC- are modulated. fig.
shows the reference current waveforms in the sampling period
of sector-i. The lines indicate the average phase currents, and
broken lines refers to the instantaneous currents. The duration
for which the switches are conducting in this sampling period is
given by,

where, T0 is the zero state duration, and T S is the total sampling

period. During the operation of the zero state in the case of
conventional CSI, both switches of the leg are closed in the
phase-B which is of negative voltage.Therefore no current
should flow from inverter to the L-C filters, and hence the dc
current of the inductor rises due to solar PV voltage. But in the
MCSI an alternate path for DC current through the neutral wire
and L-C filter is generated and it is given by ,
iB = -2

(5)

But this current flow which is produced during the

zero state is should be restricted .For the purpose of eliminating
this current, additional two switches SN+ and SN- are used and
they are connected in between the dc-link. The midpoint of the
added new leg is connected to the grids neutral. Therefore
during the operation of the zero state, rather than closing both
switches of phase which is negative, the switches of additional
leg with the particular negative phase are closed. This results, in
no flow of current flows from the negative voltage phase to
grids neutral. Therefore the presence of leakage current which

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affects the grid output efficiency is greatly reduced by using

MCSI.

3) The efficiency of the used inverter can be improved and

optimized, for varying load condition. SVPWM ensures
more efficient use of the input DC voltage usually 15%
when compared to other conventional PWM
techniques,
4) By exchanging the behavior of the switches of the
inverter, the audible noise can therefore be minimized.
In summary Space Vector Modulation provides improved
output performance, increased efficiency, and improved
reliability when compared to other conventional Pulse Width
Modulation (PWM).

Fig. 6. Comparison of THD Values with and without

Filter
D. SVPWM Technique
The following conditions should be satisfied for the
application of PWM technique for the proposed MCSI.
1) For maintaining the continuous supply of the dc
current: For any instant of time, one switch of the four
top switches namely SA+, SB+, SC+, or SN+ and another
switch of the bottom four switches S A-, SB-, SC-, or SNshould be ON.
2) In order to turn OFF any switch in the leg, delaying
of pulse should be provided and in order to turn ON,
advancement of
pulse should be given which
represents that before switching ON the incoming
switches the turning OFF the outgoing switches is
done and the continuity of the is achieved .The
duration of the phase
delay and
the phase
advancement are small when compared to the total
sampling period.
3) For forcing positive current i dc1 , , the upper switch of
the particular phase leg must be turned ON.
Similarly, to force -idc2, into the phase lower switch of
that particular phase leg must be turned ON.
4) For zero current state, both switches SN+ and SN- must
be in ON state.
Using Space Vector Modulation the calculation of the
parameters is simple and easy. The THD present in the load
current can be anticipated by the use of SVPWM when
compared by using the inverter without filter which is (see Fig.
6). Since it is simplified, computing time required is small, and
therefore better transient and dynamic performance can be
obtained.
Space Vector pulse Width Modulation for a inverter makes
them possible to sustain under different situations such as: half
and full load, linear and non-linear load, stationary load,
fluctuating load, etc. the following advantages:
1) Very low values of the output voltage THD can be
obtained.
2) Robust and better dynamic response.

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Fig.7. Current Waveform without Filter

Fig.8. Current Waveform with Filter using SVPWM

Fig. 9. Output of leakage current in PV module using SVPWM

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VII. CONCLUSION
By the use of the Current Source Inverter(CSI) the
reliability is improved and it is greater when compared to
voltage source inverter. The maximum power to the inverter can
be tracked by using Maximum Power Point Tracker(MPPT)
control. The output from controller can be boosted to a constant
non inverted polarity level by using SPEIC converter ad it is fed
to CSI. But the use of the conventional current source inverter
induces ground leakage current which must be within the range
of 300 mA. Hence modified current source inverter is proposed
where the ground leakage current can be minimized by addition
of the fourth leg which is connected to the neutral, common
mode inductor, split DC link capacitor ,SVPWM technique can
be used . This can be achieved by,
1) Common mode inductor is used and it offers high
impedance to the leakage current and this ground
current is therefore minimized.
2) Since by connecting grid neutral point to the split
capacitor eliminates the high frequency harmonic
component from (CM) voltage and this arrangement
restricts the flow of the current through the circuit.
3) Introduction of the fourth leg restricts the flow of the
undesirable ground leakage current between the neutral
and any phase in the zero state.
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