A Gallium Nitride switched-capacitor power inverter for photovoltaic applications

Author

Scott, Mark J. ; Zou, Ke ; Inoa, Ernesto ; Duarte, Ramiro ; Huang, Yi ; Wang, Jin

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH, USA

fYear

2012

fDate

5-9 Feb. 2012

Firstpage

46

Lastpage

52

Abstract

A Gallium Nitride (GaN) based switched-capacitor module integrated inverter (MII) is presented in this paper. This two stage solution first employs a dc/dc quadrupler that utilizes an interleaving charging scheme. This strategy not only reduces the high frequency current ripple subjected to the photovoltaic panel, but also decreases the voltage ripple on the DC link between the two stages. The second stage is a five-level boost inverter that is responsible for both maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and minimizing reactive power flow. Both stages utilize a resonant soft-switching scheme in the capacitor charging current loops to increase the MII´s efficiency. Basic theoretical analysis and experimental results for the individual stages are included.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; gallium compounds; load flow; maximum power point trackers; photovoltaic power systems; reactive power; resonant invertors; switched capacitor networks; wide band gap semiconductors; GaN; dc/dc quadrupler; five-level boost inverter; gallium nitride; interleaving charging; maximum power point tracking; photovoltaic applications; photovoltaic panel; reactive power flow; resonant soft-switching; switched-capacitor module integrated inverter; switched-capacitor power inverter; Capacitance; Capacitors; Gallium nitride; Inductance; Inverters; Switches; Zero current switching;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), 2012 Twenty-Seventh Annual IEEE

Conference_Location

Orlando, FL

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1215-9

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4577-1214-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/APEC.2012.6165797

Filename

6165797