Current sensor-less control of a Cascaded H-Bridge photovoltaic system

The control of Cascaded H-Bridge (CHB) photovoltaic (PV) systems typically requires the power generated by the PV arrays to be measured. The power measurement is used to generate the reference current to inject power into the grid as well as for Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). The number of current sensors required for high level number systems increases their cost and complexity. Power estimation can be used to eliminate current sensor requirements by inferring the PV power from other measurements. This paper presents a power estimation method for a CHB PV system with a Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme. The performance is shown to be comparable to measurement via simulation results.