A Modified PV fed Single-Phase Single-Stage Switched-Capacitor Inverter for a Stand-alone Load using a Lower Number of Controlled-Switches

Abstract

Ever since the inception of power electronics in the domain of power systems, majority of the power electronic circuits have depended heavily on electromagnetics to transfer power from the input (source) side to the output (load) side. However due to the advancements in the field of power electronics, researchers are keenly exploring the idea of using electrostatic devices for transferring the power from one side to other. This paper presents an improvement over an already existing photovoltaic (PV) module fed single-stage inverter which uses switched-capacitor (SC) blocks to boost the PV voltage and process it into AC. The improvement is achieved by using an equal number of controlled and uncontrolled switches. Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm ensures that the PV module is operated at its maximum power point (MPP). Simulation results have been obtained from MATLAB/SIMULINK which show that this inverter is capable of delivering quality power even on days when the sun is not bright and the irradiation levels are low. A comparison is done with the existing works to highlight the advantages of proposed topology.