992 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 25, NO.

4, APRIL 2010

Design and Analysis of a Grid-Connected

Photovoltaic Power System
Bo Yang, Wuhua Li, Member, IEEE, Yi Zhao, and Xiangning He, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—A grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) power system requires large numbers of PV modules in series, and the normal
with high voltage gain is proposed, and the steady-state model PV array voltage is between 150 and 450 V, and the system
analysis and the control strategy of the system are presented in this power is more than 500 W. This system is not applicable to the
paper. For a typical PV array, the output voltage is relatively low,
and a high voltage gain is obligatory to realize the grid-connected module-integrated inverters, because the typical power rating of
function. The proposed PV system employs a ZVT-interleaved the module-integrated inverter system is below 500 W [3], [4],
boost converter with winding-coupled inductors and active-clamp and the modules with power ratings between 100 and 200 W
circuits as the first power-processing stage, which can boost a low are also quite common [5]. The other method is to use a line
voltage of the PV array up to a high dc-bus voltage. Accordingly, frequency step-up transformer, and the normal PV array volt-
an accurate steady-state model is obtained and verified by the sim-
ulation and experimental results, and a full-bridge inverter with age is between 30 and 150 V [3], [4]. But the line frequency
bidirectional power flow is used as the second power-processing transformer has the disadvantages of larger size and weight.
stage, which can stabilize the dc-bus voltage and shape the output In the grid-connected PV system, power electronic inverters
current. Two compensation units are added to perform in the sys- are needed to realize the power conversion, grid interconnec-
tem control loops to achieve the low total harmonic distortion and tion, and control optimization [6], [7]. Generally, gird-connected
fast dynamic response of the output current. Furthermore, a simple
maximum-power-point-tracking method based on power balance pulsewidth modulation (PWM) voltage source inverters (VSIs)
is applied in the PV system to reduce the system complexity and are widely applied in PV systems, which have two functions at
cost with a high performance. At last, a 2-kW prototype has been least because of the unique features of PV modules. First, the
built and tested to verify the theoretical analysis of the paper. dc-bus voltage of the inverter should be stabilized to a specific
Index Terms—Bidirectional power flow control, compensa- value because the output voltage of the PV modules varies with
tion units, direct current control, maximum-power-point-tracking temperature, irradiance, and the effect of maximum power-point
(MPPT) method, photovoltaic (PV) system, steady-state model. tracking (MPPT). Second, the energy should be fed from the PV
modules into the utility grid by inverting the dc current into a
I. INTRODUCTION sinusoidal waveform synchronized with utility grid. Therefore,
it is clear that for the inverter-based PV system, the conversion
ODAY photovoltaic (PV) power systems are becoming
T more and more popular, with the increase of energy de-
mand and the concern of environmental pollution around the
power quality including the low THD, high power factor, and
fast dynamic response, largely depends on the control strategy
adopted by the grid-connected inverters.
world. Four different system configurations are widely devel- In this paper, a grid-connected PV power system with high
oped in grid-connected PV power applications: the centralized voltage gain is proposed. The steady-state model analysis and
inverter system, the string inverter system, the multistring in- the control strategy of the system are presented. The grid-
verter system and the module-integrated inverter system [1]–[4]. connected PV system includes two power-processing stages:
Generally three types of inverter systems except the centralized a high step-up ZVT-interleaved boost converter for boosting a
inverter system can be employed as small-scale distributed gen- low voltage of PV array up to the high dc-bus voltage, which is
eration (DG) systems, such as residential power applications. not less than grid voltage level; and a full-bridge inverter for in-
The most important design constraint of the PV DG system is verting the dc current into a sinusoidal waveform synchronized
to obtain a high voltage gain. For a typical PV module, the with the utility grid. Furthermore, the dc–dc converter is respon-
open-circuit voltage is about 21 V and the maximum power sible for the MPPT and the dc–ac inverter has the capability of
point (MPP) voltage is about 16 V. And the utility grid voltage stabilizing the dc-bus voltage to a specific value.
is 220 or 110 Vac. Therefore, the high voltage amplification is The grid-connected PV power system can offer a high voltage
obligatory to realize the grid-connected function and achieve the gain and guarantee the used PV array voltage is less than 50 V,
low total harmonic distortion (THD). The conventional system while the power system interfaces the utility grid. On the one
hand, the required quantity of PV modules in series is greatly
Manuscript received February 28, 2009; revised July 27, 2009 and August 29, reduced. And the system power can be controlled in a wide
2009. Current version published April 9, 2010. This work was supported by the range from several hundred to thousand watts only by changing
National Nature Science Foundations of China (50737002 and 50777055) and
by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (200902625). Recommended for the quantity of PV module branches in parallel. Therefore, the
publication by Associate Editor R. Burgos. proposed system can not only be applied to the string or multi-
The authors are with the College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang Uni- string inverter system, but also to the module-integrated inverter
versity, Hangzhou 310027, China (e-mail: yangbo@zju.edu.cn; woohualee@
zju.edu.cn; diabloturen@zju.edu.cn; hxn@zju.edu.cn). system in low power applications. On the other hand, the non-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2009.2036432 isolation PV systems employing neutral-point-clamped (NPC)

0885-8993/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

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 YANG et al.: DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF A GRID-CONNECTED PHOTOVOLTAIC POWER SYSTEM 993

switches and the auxiliary switches [17]. As shown in Fig. 2(a),

S1 and S2 are the main switches; Sc1 and Sc2 are the active-
clamp switches; Do1 and Do2 are the output diodes. The cou-
pling method of the winding-coupled inductors is marked by
open circles and asterisks. Each coupled inductor is modeled
as the combination of a magnetizing inductor, an ideal trans-
former with corresponding turns ratio and a leakage inductor
in series with the magnetizing inductor. The equivalent circuit
model is demonstrated in Fig. 2(b), where Lm 1 and Lm 2 are
the magnetizing inductors; Llk 1 and Llk 2 are the leakage in-
Fig. 1. Proposed grid-connected PV power system. ductors including the reflected leakage inductors of the second
and third windings of the coupled inductors; Cs1 and Cs2 are
the parallel capacitors, including the parasitic capacitors of the
switches; Cc1 and Cc2 are the clamp capacitors; N is the turns
ratio n2 /n1 .
The operation principle analysis and the steady-state wave-
forms of the high step-up ZVT-interleaved boost converter have
been discussed in [17]. Compared with the proposed converter,
the full-bridge dc–dc converter is also employed commonly as a
similar first stage in the PV system. However, for the high step-
up gain applications, the large current ripples of the primary-side
switches increase the conduction losses, and the secondary-side
diodes need to sustain a high voltage stress. Moreover, as a buck-
type converter, a large turns ratio of the transformer is necessary
to obtain a high step-up gain, which induces a large leakage
inductance and large commutation energy on the primary-side
switches. Therefore, the design of the transformer is difficult
and the converter’s efficiency is impacted. Furthermore, the
resonant-mode converters such as LLC, LCC, and higher order
element converters are studied and developed, which are attrac-
tive for potential higher efficiency and higher power density
than PWM counterparts. However, most of resonant convert-
ers include some inherent problems, such as electromagnetic
interference (EMI) problems due to variable frequency oper-
Fig. 2. High step-up ZVT-interleaved boost converter and its equivalent cir- ation and reduced conversion efficiency due to circulating en-
cuit. (a) ZVT-interleaved boost converter. (b) Equivalent circuit. ergy generation. Moreover, to make practical use of the resonant
converters, the required precise control waveform and difficult
topology, highly efficient reliable inverter concept (HERIC) overcurrent protection increase the design complexity of the
topology, H5 topology, etc. [8]–[14], have been widely used whole system [21]–[24]. Correspondingly the ZVT-interleaved
especially in Europe. Although the transformerless system hav- boost converter has the following three main advantages.
ing a floating and nonearth-connected PV dc bus requires more 1) Voltage gain is extended greatly by using a proper turns
protection [10], [15], [16], it has several advantages such as high ratio design. As the turns ratio increases, the voltage gain
efficiency, lightweight, etc. Therefore, the nonisolation scheme increases without the extreme duty ratio, which can re-
in this paper is quite applicable by employing the high step-up duces the input and output current ripples. Omitting the
ZVT-interleaved boost converter, because high voltage gain of effect of the leakage inductance and applying the voltage-
the converter ensures that the PV array voltage is below 50 V and second balance to the magnetizing inductor, the voltage
benefits the personal safety even if in high-power application. gain is given by
Fig. 1 shows the proposed grid-connected PV power system. Vout N +1
M= = . (1)
Vin 1−D
II. STEADY-STATE MODEL OF HIGH STEP-UP 2) Voltage stress of the main switches is reduced, as the
ZVT-INTERLEAVED BOOST CONVERTER turns ratio increases. Therefore, the low-voltage and high-
Fig. 2 shows the ZVT-interleaved boost converter with performance devices can be used to reduce the switching
winding-coupled inductors and active-clamp circuits, which is and conduction losses. And the voltage spikes are clamped
proposed by our research team [17]. The winding-coupled in- effectively and the leakage energy is recovered. If the
ductors offer the voltage-gain extension [18]–[20]. The active- clamp capacitance is assumed large enough and the volt-
clamp circuits realize the ZVT commutation of the main age ripple on the switches can be ignored when they turn

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 994 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 25, NO. 4, APRIL 2010

off, the normalized voltage stress of the main switches is

given by
Vout
Vds = . (2)
N +1
3) ZVT soft switching is achieved for both main switches and
auxiliary switches during the whole switching transition,
which means the switching losses are reduced greatly.
Diode reverse-recovery loss is greatly reduced because
the di/dt of the diode current is controlled by the inherent
leakage inductor of a coupled boost inductor.
Unfortunately, the leakage inductor of the winding-coupled
inductors has great effect on the voltage gain expression and
a big error is found in the steady-state model based on (1),
especially when the leakage inductance increases to a certain
level, which brings difficulty to the design of circuit parameters.
To derive a more accurate steady-state model of the converter,
the leakage inductance of the winding-coupled inductors should
be considered, since the leakage inductance strongly influences
the operation states of the circuit. To simplify the calculation,
the following conditions are assumed in reason.
1) The clamp capacitance is large enough, so the voltage
ripple on the main switches can be ignored and the voltage
Vds is taken as a constant when they turn off.
2) The magnetizing inductance is much larger than the leak-
Fig. 3. Partial key waveforms of the converter.
age inductance, so the magnetizing current IL m is taken
as a constant in one switching period.
3) The dead times of the main switches and the corresponding
auxiliary switches are ignored. As shown in Fig. 2, the voltages on the winding-coupled
4) The two interleaved and intercoupled boost converter cells inductors are decided by
are provided with a strict symmetry.
Based on the previous assumptions, the partial key waveforms Vn◦1 = VL m 1 = Vds1 − VL k 1 (8)
of this converter are shown in Fig. 3, which have reached a steady
Vn◦2 =N× Vn◦1 (9)
state. And the following approximations are given:
Vn∗2 = N × (Vin − VL k 2 ) (10)
∆If ≈ ∆Ir = ∆I (3)
VL k 1 ≈ VL k 2 = VL k . (4) where Vn◦1 represents the voltage of the first winding L1a .
Therefore, substituting (6), (9), and (10) into (5), the equation
The equation of the output voltage is always true by the of the output voltage in stage a is obtained
Kirchhoff voltage law

Vout = Vds1 + Vn◦2 + Vn∗2 (5) Vout = (N + 1) × Vds1 − 2 × N × VL k

N +1 ∆I
where Vn◦2 and Vn∗2 , respectively, represent the voltage of the = × Vin − 2 × N × Llk 1 × . (11)
second winding L1b and the voltage of the third winding L2c . 1−D (1 − D)/fs

A. Stage a (Main Switches S1 is OFF and S2 is ON) B. Stage b (Main Switches S1 is ON and S2 is ON)
Based on the voltage-second balance to the magnetizing in- Likewise, from the waveforms shown in Fig. 3, it can be found
ductor, the switching voltage of S1 is given by that
Vin
Vds1 = . (6) Vds1 = 0 (12)
1−D
∆Ir ∆I
From the waveform of iL k 1 shown in Fig. 3, it can be found VL k = VL k 1 = Llk 1 × = Llk 1 × . (13)
that ∆t2 ∆t2

∆If ∆I Considering the polarity of the voltages on the winding-

VL k = VL k 1 = Llk 1 × = Llk 1 × . (7)
∆t1 (1 − D)/fs coupled inductors in stage b, the voltage expressions for the

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 YANG et al.: DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF A GRID-CONNECTED PHOTOVOLTAIC POWER SYSTEM 995

winding-coupled inductors are also obtained by TABLE I

STEADY-STATE MODEL VERIFICATION
Vn◦1 = VL m 1 = VL k 1 − Vin (14)
Vn◦2 = N × Vn◦1 (15)
Vn∗2 = N × (VL k 2 + Vin ). (16)
Therefore, substituting (12), (15), and (16) into (5), the equa-
tion of the output voltage in stage b is obtained
∆I
Vout = 2 × N × VL k = 2 × N × Llk 1 × . (17)
∆t2
In addition, from the waveform of iD o1 shown in Fig. 3, the
total charge through the two output diodes in one switching
period is decided by
∆I
Q1 = 2QD o1 = (∆t1 + ∆t2 ) ×. (18)
N
Meanwhile, the charge through the load in one switching
period is
Vout 1
Q2 = × . (19)
R fs
Therefore, the charge-conservation equation can be found that
∆I Vout 1
(∆t1 + ∆t2 ) × = × . (20)
N R fs
Therefore, the (11), (17), and (20) can be solved to obtain the
expression for the steady-state model of the converter.
Vout
M=
Vin


[(1 − D)R]2 + 8N 2 fs Llk R − (1 − D)R
= (N + 1)
4N 2 × fs × Llk
(21)
where Llk is the equivalent leakage inductance of the winding-
coupled inductors, and Llk = Llk 1 = Llk 2 , and R is the equiv- Fig. 4. Control block of two-stage grid-connected PV system.
alent load of the converter.
As shown in Table I, the results calculated by the two steady-
state models and the simulation software PSIM, are compared
to verify the proposed model. From the data in Table I, the max-
imum error of the output voltage between the accurate model
based on (21) and the simulation results is only 0.6%, and the
corresponding maximum error of the model based on (1) reaches
up to 43.1%. It is clear that the proposed steady-state model ap-
proaches the simulation results closely.

III. CONTROL STRATEGY OF FULL-BRIDGE INVERTER WITH

BIDIRECTIONAL POWER FLOW Fig. 5. Control block of full-bridge inverter with bidirectional power flow.

The full-bridge inverter shown in Fig. 1 works as a

voltage-source PWM (VS-PWM) converter in this paper, which
implements the bidirectional power flow. By using a direct- power facilitates the compensation of the dc-bus and the ac-side
current-control strategy, the VS-PWM converter can force the voltage variations, which helps to stabilize the dc-bus voltage
instantaneous load current to accurately follow the sinusoidal in startup and cloudy situations and improves the stability of
reference, which synchronizes with the utility grid voltage. And overall system. Fig. 4 shows the control block of the two-stage
the high power factor, the low THD and the fast dynamic grid-connected PV system. Fig. 5 shows the control block of the
response are achieved. Furthermore, the bidirectional flow of full-bridge inverter with bidirectional power flow.

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 996 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 25, NO. 4, APRIL 2010

A. Control of the Bidirectional Power Flow TABLE II

P&O ALGORITHM EMPLOYING U e
As shown in Fig. 5, the dc-bus voltage Udc is always con-
trolled to keep a constant value Uref with zero error by the
voltage-feedback control loop. Meanwhile, the direction and
magnitude of VS-PWM converter’s output current and power
are decided dynamically by the value of Ue , which is the output
of negative PI regulator in the voltage loop.
If Udc > Uref then Ue is increasing, and the VS-PWM con-
verter works as an inverter which transfers the PV array power
to the utility grid. The energy generation of PV power system is
positively correlated with the magnitude of Ue .
If Udc < Uref then Ue is decreasing, and when Ue < 0, the The PI regulator in the grid-voltage-feedforward control mul-
VS-PWM converter works as a PWM rectifier, which draws the tiplies the real, defective grid voltage with a proportion gain
energy from the utility grid to the capacitor of dc bus, maintain- Kf . Its output uc and the output ua of PI regulator in current-
ing the stability of dc-bus voltage. The current in the negative feedback loop are together fed to the PWM modulator to pro-
direction finally approaches a quite small value, which is only duce the drive signals for the inverter switches. Therefore, the
used to compensate for the switch losses of VS-PWM converter. modulation wave uout includes the defective component of grid
The earlier characteristic guarantees that the dc-bus voltage voltage to compensate grid voltage fluctuation and obtain highly
is stabilized to a required value by the back-end VS-PWM con- sinusoidal current waveform. The feedforward effect depends
verter, whether the front-end dc–dc converter works or not. on the value of Kf .
Therefore, it is avoided that the ZVT-interleaved Boost con- In addition, the frequency ω and phase φ of current reference
verter works in an open-circuit state, on the condition that the iref are calculated to synchronize with utility grid voltage ugrid
back end is started up prior to the front end. in real time by a phase-locked-loop (PLL) system, which is
achieved via the digital algorithm of DSP chip in this paper.
B. Direct Current Control With Compensation Units
IV. SIMPLE MPPT SOLUTION BASED ON POWER BALANCE
As shown in Fig. 5, the load currents iout is detected and
compared with the reference current iref , and the error signal Many MPPT solutions are developed to ensure the optimal
is processed by a PI regulator in the current-feedback control utilization of PV modules [27]–[29]. The implementations gen-
loop. Main advantages of this direct current control are the erally involve sensing the output current and voltage of PV
low harmonics to reduce losses in steady state, the fast re- modules, and the MPPT algorithms use the information to max-
sponse to provide high dynamic performances, and the peak- imize power drawn from the PV modules. Unfortunately, such
current protection to reject overload [25], [26]. Generally, the realizations are costly and complex [27], [28].
current control loop is designed to have a bandwidth of 2–5 kHz, In this paper a simple MPPT solution is adopted in view of
higher than the voltage loop bandwidth of 200–500 Hz, to as- the power balance. If omitting the whole system losses, the gen-
sure the stability of the proposed inverter control with two PI erated power of the PV array is equal to the output power that
regulators. is transferred to the utility grid. Therefore, the rms value of the
However, the instantaneous power and the dc-bus voltage in- load currents iout is in proportion to the PV array power, as
clude a ripple component with the frequency 2ω in the case the grid voltage is clamped to 220 or 110 V. And as discussed
of a single-phase inverter. Furthermore, the grid voltage is not earlier, the magnitude of the load current iout directly depends
an ideal sinusoidal waveform in practice. Therefore, it is hard on the output Ue of the negative PI controller in the voltage
to achieve low THD of the output current by using the sim- loop. Therefore, the majority of MPPT algorithms can be im-
ple direct-current-control strategy in the real grid condition. plemented by controlling the value Ue rather than the calculated
Accordingly, two compensation units are added to the current power value by multiplying the inputs from voltage and current
control loop as the feedforward control units. The feedforward sensors, which holds universality.
control has little impact on the system’s zeros and poles config- To verify the previous analysis, as shown in Table II, the
uration, but achieves to track the sinusoidal reference accurately perturb and observe (P&O) algorithm of employing the value
and restrain the harmonics distortion of the load current, espe- Ue is applied in this paper. And perturbing the duty ratio D
cially at the current peak. of the ZVT-interleaved boost converter perturbs the PV array
Compensation coefficient Kd directly processes the magni- current and voltage, and consequently, perturbs the PV array
tude of reference currents iref , and can counteract the main power. The operating point is then adjusted to maximize PV
influences of the dc-bus voltage ripple because Kd represents array power.
a negative fluctuating feature with the frequency 2ω, compared The other advantage is the simple MPPT solution ensures the
with the dc-bus voltage ripple. Kd is defined as maximization of the power transferred to the utility grid, but not
the output power from PV array. Although the two are equiva-
Uref lent in theory, the former is a real MPPT technique in practice
Kd = . (22)
Udc that converts maximum energy to utility grid, because some

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 YANG et al.: DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF A GRID-CONNECTED PHOTOVOLTAIC POWER SYSTEM 997

complications, like nonlinearity of the whole system losses and

long-term fluctuation of the utility grid voltage, are eliminated.

V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A. System Configuration
To confirm the theoretical analysis in the previous sections, a
2-kW prototype of the proposed grid-connected PV power sys-
tem was built. Two ZVT-interleaved boost converters of 1 kW
are connected in parallel via a dc bus through a central inverter
of 2 kW to the grid. The lower power dc–dc converters are con-
nected respectively to the individual PV arrays, and the central
inverter can expand the power rate and reduce the system cost.
The detailed components and parameters used are as follows.
ZVT-interleaved boost converter:
Vin : 38–50 V; Vout : 380 V.
fs : 50 kHz dead time: ∆td1 = ∆td2 = 250 ns.
N = n2 :n1 = 36:18 = 2.
S1 and S2 : FQA62N25C.
Sc1 and Sc2 : FQA59N25C.
Do1 and Do2 : RHRP15120.
Cc1 and Cc2 : 2.2 µF.
Cs1 and Cs2 : 2.2 nF.
Lm 1 and Lm 2 : 150 µH.
Llk 1 and Llk 2 : 4 µH.
Full-bridge inverter:
fs : 20 kHz; dead time: 1 µs.
Insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT): FGAF40N60.
Cdc : 470 µF × 4.
Lf 1 and Lf 2 : 1.2 mH.
Digital controller:
TMS320F2808.

B. Experimental Results
The following experimental results are given at 1 kW power
generation of each PV array under a specific temperature and
irradiance condition, and the total power of the grid-connected
PV system can reaches 2 kW.
Fig. 6 shows the experimental results of the ZVT-interleaved
boost converter at 1 kW when the input voltage is 40 V. As shown
in Fig. 6(a), the extreme duty ratio is avoided when the voltage
gain is extended. Meanwhile, the voltage stress of the main
switches is reduced to 170 V, far lower than the output voltage
380 V, and the low-voltage and high-performance devices can
be used to reduce the conduction losses. The waveforms of
ZVT soft switching of the main switch S1 and clamp switch
Fig. 6. Experimental results about ZVT-interleaved boost converter.
Sc1 are, respectively, shown in Fig. 6(b) and (c). It is clear that (a) Switching voltages of main switch S 1 , S 2 . (b) ZVT operation for main
the ZVT of the main switches and the auxiliary switches are switch S 1 . (c) ZVT operation for auxiliary switch S c 1 . (d) Turn-OFF current of
achieved during the whole switching transition, which reduces output diode D o 1 .
the switching losses, improves the efficiency and increases the
power density. Fig. 6(d) shows the experimental waveform of Furthermore, to verify the proposed steady-state model of
the turn-OFF current of the output diode Do1 . It is clear that the ZVT-interleaved boost converter, the experimental results
the reverse-recovery current is reduced to a small value, and of the output voltage are compared in Table III. It is clear that
the reverse-recovery problem is alleviated dramatically by the the experimental error values are within 2.5% of the values
leakage inductor. The EMI noise is suppressed significantly, and calculated by the accurate model and the simulation software.
the losses caused by the reverse recovery are reduced greatly. The errors are induced by the assumptions in modeling.

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 998 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 25, NO. 4, APRIL 2010

TABLE III
EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION OF STEADY-STATE MODEL

Fig. 8. Harmonic spectrum of the output current at 2 kW.

Fig. 7. Experimental results about full-bridge inverter with bidirectional

power flow. (a) Output current and dc-bus voltage waveforms in the rectify-
ing condition. (b) Output current and dc-bus voltage waveforms in the inverting Fig. 9. Experimental results of the system dynamic response under different
condition. step source changes. (a) Dynamic response under power source change from
500 to 1600 W. (b) Dynamic response under power source change from 1600 to
500 W.
Fig. 7 shows the experimental results of the full-bridge in-
verter with bidirectional power flow. The output current and the
dc-bus voltage waveforms in the rectifying condition are shown to 1600 W, and reversely, the power source is changed from
in Fig. 7(a). It is clear that the current is close to zero and the 1600 to 500 W, as shown in Fig. 9(b). It can be clearly seen that
dc-bus voltage is stabilized to 380 V without a very small rip- the fast and effective responses to the abrupt source changes
ple, because no active power is consumed except compensating are achieved due to the direct-current-control strategy with two
for the IGBTs losses. The output current and the dc-bus volt- compensation units.
age waveforms at 2 kW in the inverting condition are shown in Fig. 10 shows the MPPT effect of P&O algorithm by employ-
Fig. 7(b). It can be clearly seen that the output current is highly ing the value Ue , when the MPP is changed from 500 to 800 W.
sinusoidal synchronized with the grid voltage, which is hardly The output current waveform in the MPPT process is shown in
deteriorated by the ripple component with the frequency 2ω of Fig. 10(a), and the responses of output current rms and output
the dc-bus voltage due to the two compensation units. Fig. 8 power rms are shown in Fig. 10(b). It is clear that the output
shows the harmonic spectrum of the output current at 2 kW, and current and power gradually increase during the MPPT period
the measured THD counted till to 50th is 3.384%. and finally reach the steady stage. Therefore, this MPPT method
The experimental results of the dynamic response for the based on power balance is practical with a good performance.
system under different step source changes are given in Fig. 9. Fig. 11 and Table IV show the detailed efficiency data of the
As shown in Fig. 9(a), the power source is changed from 500 whole system including the maximum efficiency and European

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 YANG et al.: DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF A GRID-CONNECTED PHOTOVOLTAIC POWER SYSTEM 999

VI. CONCLUSION
This paper presented a grid-connected PV power system with
high voltage gain. The proposed PV system employs a high
step-up ZVT-interleaved boost converter with winding-coupled
inductors and active-clamp circuits as the first power-processing
stage, and high voltage gain is obtained by the turns ratio se-
lection of winding-coupled inductors. An accurate steady-state
model of the converter is obtained and verified by the simulation
and experimental results. A full-bridge inverter with bidirec-
tional power flow is used as the second power-processing stage,
to stabilize the dc-bus voltage and shape the output current. Two
compensation units are added to the system control loops, and
the low current THD and the high dynamic performance are
achieved. Furthermore, a simple MPPT method based on power
balance is applied in the PV system and represents a good per-
formance. A 2-kW prototype is built, and experimental results
confirm the validity and applicability of the proposed PV system.

REFERENCES
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 1000 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 25, NO. 4, APRIL 2010

[18] Q. Zhao and F. C. Lee, “High-efficiency, high step-up DC–DC converters,” Yi Zhao was born in Liaoning, China, in 1983. He
IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 65–73, Jan. 2003. received the B.Sc. degree in the College of Electrical
[19] R. J. Wai and R. Y. Duan, “High step-up converter with coupled-inductor,” and Electronic Engineering, Huazhong University of
IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 1025–1035, Sep. 2005. Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2006. He
[20] K. C. Tseng and T. J. Liang, “Novel high-efficiency step-up converter,” is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree with the
IEE Electr. Power Appl., vol. 151, no. 2, pp. 182–190, Mar. 2004. College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang Univer-
[21] F. C. Lee, S. Wang, P. Kong, C. Wang, and D. Fu, “Power architecture sity, Hangzhou, China.
design with improved system efficiency, EMI and power density,” in Proc. His research interests include dc/dc converters and
IEEE PESC Conf., 2008, pp. 4131–4137. photovoltaic power system.
[22] A. Bellini, S. Bifaretti, and V. Iacovone, “Resonant DC–DC converters
for photovoltaic energy generation systems,” in Proc. IEEE SPEEDAM
Conf., 2008, pp. 815–820.
[23] D. Fu, F. C. Lee, Y. Liu, and M. Xu, “Novel multi-element resonant
converters for front-end dc/dc converters,” in Proc. IEEE PESC Conf.,
2008, pp. 250–256.
[24] D. Fu, F. C. Lee, Y. Qiu, and F. Wang, “A novel high-power-density
three level LCC resonant converter with constant-power-factor-control Xiangning He (M’95–SM’96–F’10) received the
for charging applications,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 23, no. 5, B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Nanjing University
pp. 2411–2420, Sep. 2008. of Aeronautical and Astronautical, Nanjing, China,
[25] M. P. Kazmierkowski and L. Malesani, “Current control techniques for in 1982 and 1985, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
three-phase Voltage-Source PWM Converters: A survey,” IEEE Trans. from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 1989.
Ind. Electron., vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 691–703, Oct. 1998. From 1985 to 1986, he was an Assistant Engineer
[26] M. Cichowias and M. P. Kamierkowski, “Comparison of current control at the 608 Institute of Aeronautical Industrial General
techniques for PWM rectifiers,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp., 2002, pp. 1259– Company, Zhuzhou, China. From 1989 to 1991, he
1263. was a Lecturer at Zhejiang University. In 1991, he
[27] T. Esram and P. L. Chapman, “Comparison of photovoltaic array maximum obtained a Fellowship from the Royal Society, U.K.,
power point tracking techniques,” IEEE Trans. Energy Convers., vol. 22, and conducted research in the Department of Com-
no. 2, pp. 439–449, Jun. 2007. puting and Electrical Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K., as
[28] A. Pandey, N. Dasgupta, and A. K. Mukeriee, “A simple single-sensor a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow for two years. In 1994, he joined Zhejiang
MPPT solution,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 698– University as an Associate Professor, where he has been a Full Professor with
700, Mar. 2007. the College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, since 1996. He was
[29] S. Jain and V. Agarwal, “A single-stage grid connected inverter topology the Director of the Power Electronics Research Institute and the Head of the
for solar PV systems with maximum power point tracking,” IEEE Trans. Department of Applied Electronics. He is currently the Vice Dean of the Col-
Power Electron., vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 1928–1940, Sep. 2007. lege of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University. His research interests are
power electronics and their industrial applications. He is the author or coauthor
of more than 200 papers and one book “Theory and Applications of Multi-level
Converters.” He holds 12 patents.
Dr. He received the 1989 Excellent Ph.D. Graduate Award, the 1995 Elite
Prize Excellence Award, the 1996 Outstanding Young Staff Member Award, and
the 2006 Excellent Staff Award from Zhejiang University for his teaching and
Bo Yang was born in Sichuan, China, in 1981. He research contributions. He received five Scientific and Technological Progress
received the B.Sc. degree in applied power electronics Awards from Zhejiang Provincial Government and the State Educational Min-
in 2004 from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, istry of China in 1998, 2002, and 2009, respectively, and five Excellent Paper
where he is currently working the Ph.D. degree in Awards. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (for-
electrical engineering. merly IEE), U.K.
His current research interests include photovoltaic
power system, power converter modeling, and digital
control techniques.

Wuhua Li (M’09) received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. de-

grees in applied power electronics and electrical engi-
neering from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China,
in 2002 and 2008, respectively.
From September 2004 to March 2005, he was
an Intern, and from January 2007 to June 2008, a
Research Assistant in GE Global Research Center,
Shanghai, China. In July 2008, he joined the Col-
lege of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University,
where he is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow. His re-
search interests include high frequency dc/dc con-
verters, soft-switching techniques, RF power amplifiers, converter modeling,
and digital control.

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