Critical review on various inverter topologies for PV system architectures

Abstract

To achieve clean and sustainable energy, the demand for renewable energy has been increasing day-by-day. As it is known the conversion efficiency of PV cells is very less, which motivates further research in the development of PV systems. Incorporating the power converters of less cost, more life-time, compact size, and preferably low complexity will address the above-mentioned limitation. To achieve optimum performance from PV systems for different applications especially in interfacing the utility to renewable energy sources, choosing an appropriate grid-tied inverter is crucial. The different types of PV inverter topologies for central, string, multi-string, and micro architectures are reviewed. These PV inverters are further classified and analysed by a number of conversion stages, presence of transformer, and type of decoupling capacitor used. This study reviews the inverter topologies for all PV architectures, which is new of its type. All the parameters such as merits, demerits, complexity, power devices of the aforementioned PV inverter are drafted and tabulated at the end of every classification. Different control strategies for balanced and unbalanced grid integration such as d q, α β, a b c, fault ride through, and unified power flow control are discussed. This review would be helpful for researchers in this field to select a most feasible inverter for their application, as this study reviews considerable number of PV inverters on one platform.