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International Journal on Emerging Technologies 5(2): 17-21(2014)

ISSN No. (Print) : 0975-8364
ISSN No. (Online) : 2249-3255

Modeling of Inverter for Photovoltaic Module with Grid

Synchronization System
Areen Shankar*, Anula Khare** and Amit Shrivastava**
*

P.G. Scholar, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,

Oriental College of Technology, Bhopal, (MP) India
**Professor, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Oriental College of Technology, Bhopal, (MP) India
(Corresponding author: Areen Shankar)
(Received 05 July, 2014 Accepted 18 August, 2014)

ABSTRACT: This paper describes a model of an inverter for grid connected photovoltaic arrays. It is shown
that the use of a multi level voltage source inverter without transformer is a reasonable solution for the input
to grid in the lower power range (< 2kW). The structure of the photovoltaic power system is presented. Each
component of the system is discussed in detail. Simulation results demonstrate the PV inverter voltage and
grid connected voltage.
I. INTRODUCTION
Photovoltaic (PV) power supplied to the utility grid is
gaining more and more attention nowadays.
Photovoltaic cells generate electric energy from the
solar energy. Although solar energy is available
abundantly and free of cost, the cost of the photovoltaic
cells is very high. Hence the initial investment on solar
energy will be very high. The electrical energy form the
solar cells, is dc form and it has to be stored and
processed to required form to suite the load
requirements.
In recent years, multilevel converters have shown some
significant advantages over traditional two-level
converters, especially for high power and high voltage
applications. In addition to their superior output voltage
quality, they can also reduce voltage stress across
switching devices. Since the output voltages have
multiple levels, lower dv/dt is achieved, which greatly
alleviates electromagnetic interference problems due to
high frequency switching. Over the years most research
work has focused on converters with three to five
voltage levels, although topologies with very high
number of voltage levels were also proposed. In
general, the more voltage levels a converter has the less
harmonic and better power quality it provides.
However, the increase in converter complexity and
number of switching devices is a major concern for
multilevel converter. There are several topologies
available, being the Neutral Point Clamped [5], Flying
Capacitor [6] and Cascaded H bridge inverter [7] . In
above different topology we use in the paper cascaded
bridge. In recent years many variations and
combinations of these topologies have been reported,
one of them is the cascaded H-bridge.

Fig. 1. Functional block diagram of photovoltaic power

supply unit.
A general arrangement used in photovoltaic standby
power supply units is shown in Fig.1. AC to dc inverter
circuits are employed to convert the dc voltage to ac
voltage of required frequency and voltage.
Fundamentally there are two approaches; one is to
connect the cells in series to generate high voltage dc
and use high voltage dc to ac inverter circuit. [1] This
configuration requires devices of higher voltage rating
for the inverter. Another approach is to use low voltage
power devices for the inverter and step up the voltage
using transformers. [2] In both the cases high switching
frequency is employed to generate sinusoidal output
voltage and to reduce filter requirements. High
switching frequency will result in increased switching
losses and EMI problems, which in turn calls for the
proper design of heat sinks and layout of the power
circuit. In order to reduce the switching losses, resonant
converters can be used, but the design of these resonant
type inverters is complicated and costly.
In this paper a fifteen level multilevel inverter is
employed as dc to ac inverter for photovoltaic power
supply system. The working principles of this inverter
are explained in section II. Fifteen level inverter results
in sinusoidal output voltage and current, hence there is
no need of filter circuits. Since the output voltage is
compatible with the load, there is no need of output
transformer. Seven Bridge circuits are connected in
cascade.

18

Shankar, Khare and Shrivastava

The voltage across each of the device is 1/7th of the
peak output voltage. Hence low voltage MOSFETs are
employed. The low voltage MOSFETs have low on
state resistance (Rds(on) ), hence the conduction losses
are reduced. Step modulation is employed in the
proposed inverter, which results in low switching
losses. The simulation results are presented. The
experimental implementation of the system is present
and some aspects of the experimental implementation
are given in section V.

Fig. 2. One phase of a cascaded Half bridge multilevel

inverter.
Table 1. Switching table for Half Bridge.

II. INVERTER TOPOLOGIES

The power in the PV cell is in DC mode and grid power
in AC mode, therefore there should be a conversion
from DC to AC by a power converter. Inverters can do
this conversion. The simplest topology that can be used
for this conversion is the fifteen level inverter that
consists of two switches in each bridge. Each switch
needs an anti-parallel diode, so there should be also two
anti parallel diodes. There are also other topologies for
inverters. A multilevel inverter is a power electronic
system that synthesizes a sinusoidal voltage output
from several DC sources. These DC sources can be fuel
cells, solar cells, ultra capacitors, etc. The main idea of
multilevel inverters is to have a better sinusoidal
voltage and current in the output by using switches in
series. Since many switches are put in series the
switching angles are important in the multilevel
inverters because all of the switches should be switched
in such a way that the output voltage and current have
low harmonic distortion. Multilevel inverters have three
types. Diode clamped multilevel inverters, flying
capacitor multilevel inverters and cascaded bridge
multilevel inverter.
The concept of this inverter is based on connecting 7
half bridge converter in series to get a DC voltage
output. The output voltage is the sum of the voltage that
is generated by each cell. The number of output voltage
levels are 2n+1, where n is the number of cells. After
that this output voltage injected of an H-bridge inverter.
The switching angles can be chosen in such a way that
the total harmonic distortion is minimized. One of the
advantages of this type of multilevel inverter is that it
needs less number of components comparative to the
Diode clamped or the flying capacitor, so the price and
the weight of the inverter is less than that of the two
former types. The Half H-Bridge Configuration is
shown in Fig. 2. By using single Half H-Bridge we can
get 2 voltage levels. The switching table is given in
Table 1.

III. PHOTOLTAIC
INTERFACE

MODULE

INVERTER

A. Nominal Power
The maximum power generated by the investigated PV
modules is 100 W at an irradiation of 1000 W/m2, and
an ambient temperature of 25 C. This operating point
is however very seldom reached. The nominal power
for the inverter is therefore selected to 100 W / 1.2 90
W, with the capability of operating at 120% power
during short time.
B. Starting Power
The inverter should be able to invert even small
amounts of DC power into AC power. In other words,
the inverter must be able to operate at very low
irradiation. The weighted average of efficiencies down
to 5%. Thus, the inverter should be able to operate at
5% or less of the nominal power, which is 8 W
C. Maximum Open-Circuit Voltage
The worst-case open-circuit voltage across the
investigated PV modules is estimated to 48 V at 1000
W/m2, and a cell temperature of 25 C. Thus, the
inverter must withstand at least 48 V without being
damaged, and 50 V is selected
D. Over Voltage Protection
The inverter must be capable to withstand over-voltages
caused by nearby lightning, etc. It is recommended to
use a surge arrestor (Metal Oxide Varistor) with an
inception voltage of 1.2 times nominal voltage [3]. The
arrestor should be connected from the positive to the
negative input terminals. The inception- and inclination
voltage should therefore be higher than 50 V.
E. Maximum Short Circuit Current
The maximum short-circuit current generated by the
investigated PV modules is 7.2 A. A maximum current
of 8 A is therefore chosen.

Shankar, Khare and Shrivastava

IV. INVERTER GRID INTERFACE
A. Voltage
The nominal voltage for Indian grids is 230 V 10%.
B. Maximum Power
The Indian and some Asian countries allow connection
of small inverters to normal feeders, if the total
maximum power generation does not exceed 500 W for
a regular feeder.
C. AC-Current
The amount of AC current injected into the grid is
important when speaking about saturation of the
distribution transformers. The amount of injected
current is 16A.
D. Frequency
The nominal frequency for Indian grids is 50 Hz 2.
E. PLL
The Phase Locked Loop (PLL) is to track the
fundamental grid voltage, even though that severe
background harmonics are present. Thus, the PLL can
be regarded as a high-order band-pass filter, with zero
phase distortion.

19

The arrangement of photovoltaic cells and single HalfBridge converter with H-bridge inverter which is
connected to grid is shown in Fig.3. Each photovoltaic
cell has a rated power of 54W with voltage variation of
16 to 20 volts (nominal 18V) depending on the
operating conditions such as light intensity, etc. Three
photovoltaic cells are connected in series to get a
nominal voltage of 54 volts. Three numbers of 18 volts
PV cell packs are connected in series to get a nominal
dc bus of 48volts. These batteries are charged from the
photovoltaic unit through a controlled charging circuit.
The photovoltaic grid voltage and the battery voltage of
commercially available photovoltaic power supply units
are also 54 Volts and 48 volts respectively.
The photovoltaic panels are mounted such that the
panels are given maximum solar energy for most part of
the day. Since the capacity of the projected unit is low,
photovoltaic panels are mounted on a permanent
structure and no maximum power tracking methods are
employed.
VI. RESULT

V. SIMULATION SETUP

Fig. 4. Simulation result 15 level inverter for PV

system.

Fig. 3. Simulation model of PV inverter.

MATLAB 12 version with simulink is used for
simulation purposes under windows xp sp2 platform. A
single-phase photovoltaic power supply unit is
designed. The distribution system in INDIA is threephase four wire 415 Volts, 50Hz ac supply. Bulk of the
domestic loads operates from single phase 230V, 50 Hz
ac system. So the output voltage of the proposed power
supply is designed for 230 Volts ac supply for the grid.
The peak output voltage of the inverter is 400 volts. For
a fifteen-level inverter, seven half-Bridge cells are
connected in cascade. The dc bus voltage of individual
half bridge cells is 54volts.

Fig. 5. Simulation result of grid injected voltage and

current.

Shankar, Khare and Shrivastava

A single-phase, 1KVA, R-L load simulation model is
taken. The simulation results of phase voltage and the
load current are shown in Fig. 4.
Phase voltage is 400V of PV inverter system with
output of 15 levels.
The grid injected voltage and injected current
waveform are depicted in Fig.5. According to
waveform 230V voltage and 16A current is injected in
grid supply. Due to the inverter voltage and grid voltage
synchronization 15 level inverter output waveform is
reduce and it contain 11 level to maintain 230V supply.
VII. CONCLUSION
The photovoltaic (PV) module is an all-electrical device
that converts sunlight into electrical DC power. Solidstate power electronic inverters have been used to
connect PV modules to the AC utility grid since the
early seventies. The inverter has two major tasks: to
inject a sinusoidal current into the grid, and to optimize
the operating point of the PV modules, to capture the
maximum amount of energy.
Large, Megawatt, PV systems were connected to the
grid in the eighties, but the trend is now to connect
smaller systems to the grid, in order to overcome
certain problems, like non-flexible designs, mismatch
losses between the PV modules, etc. These systems are
either based on the string-concept, with multiple
modules connected in series, or on a single PV module.
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