Abstract
This paper proposes a simple single-phase new pulse-width modulated seven-level inverter architecture for photovoltaic (PV) systems supporting home-grid with electric vehicle (EV) charging port. The proposed inverter includes a reduced number of power components and passive elements size, while showing less output-voltage total harmonic distortion (THD), and unity power factor operation. In addition, the proposed inverter requires simple control and switching strategies compared to recently published topologies. A comparative study was performed to compare the proposed inverter structure with the recent inverter topologies based on the number of components in the inverter circuit, number of components per output-voltage level, average number of active switches, THD, and operating efficiency as effective parameters for inverter performance evaluation. For design and validation purposes, numerical and analytical models for a grid-tied solar PV system driven by the proposed seven-level inverter were developed in MATLAB/Simulink environment. The inverter performance was evaluated considering grid-integration and stand-alone home with level-2 AC EV charger (3–6 kW). Compared with recently published topologies, the proposed inverter utilizes a reduced number of power components (7 switches) for seven-level terminal voltage synthesis. An experimental prototype for proposed inverter with the associated controller was built and tested for a stand-alone and grid-integrated system. Due to the lower number of ON-switches, the inverter operating efficiency was enhanced to 92.86% with load current THD of 3.43% that follows the IEEE standards for DER applications.
Highlights
The world witnessed several storms and crises that disturbed most of the energy sources around the world, which forced them to switch to standstill energy sources allowing only emergency supplies
Negative environmental impacts, along with the unsustainable nature associated with conventional energy resources, i.e., fossil fuels, provoke the development of new and clean energy resources to satisfy the increased global energy demand [1,2]
Among the different renewable energy resources, solar PV and wind energy are the most popular resources [3,4,5] which have been exploited by different companies and countries
Summary
The world witnessed several storms and crises that disturbed most of the energy sources around the world, which forced them to switch to standstill energy sources allowing only emergency supplies. This architecture still requires a large number of separate DC-sources, and it is only applicable for high output-voltage levels that complicate the control scheme and switching pattern.
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