A high efficiency PV micro-inverter with grid support functions

Author

Harfman-Todorovic, M. ; Tao, F. ; Agamy, M. ; Dong, Dianbiao ; Liu, Xindong ; Garces, Luis ; Zhou, Rui ; Delgado, Emma ; Marabell, D. ; Stephens, C. ; Steigerwald, R.

Author_Institution

GE Global Res. Center, Niskayuna, NY, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

14-18 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

4244

Lastpage

4250

Abstract

This paper presents a new photovoltaic (PV) micro-inverter topology. The topology is based on a partial power processing resonant front end dc-dc stage, followed by an interleaved inverter stage. The input stage provides high efficiency, and flexibility of design for wide input voltage range and the output stage provides an effective switching ripple of twice the PWM frequency, which reduces the output filter requirement. The designed micro-inverter can also provide grid Volt/VAR support functions according to commands received by the grid. Circuit topology and operation are presented as well as experimental results for the micro-inverter. The overall micro-inverter efficiency is 96%.

Keywords

PWM invertors; photovoltaic power systems; power grids; PV micro-inverter; PWM frequency; efficiency 96 percent; grid volt-VAR support functions; interleaved inverter stage; partial power processing; photovoltaic topology; resonant front end dc-dc stage; switching ripple; Frequency control; Inductors; Inverters; Pulse width modulation; Resonant frequency; Topology; Voltage control; Grid Support; Micro-inverters; Photovoltaics; Resonant converters;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), 2014 IEEE

Conference_Location

Pittsburgh, PA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ECCE.2014.6953979

Filename

6953979