Partial power differential-mode inverter for photovoltaic microinverter applications

Abstract

Differential-mode inverter is an attractive solution for photovoltaic (PV) microinverter applications since this structure allows to perform both voltage elevation and grid connection in a single conversion stage. In this paper a partial power differential mode inverter (PPDMI) is proposed. It is demonstrated that by using two partial power converter, the proposed solution allows to reduce the power rating of the structure by 15% in comparison to full-power structure. Moreover, averaged power processed by the converter is also reduced by 33%. In order to validate the proposed converter a PV microinverter realized with a flyback-based PPDMI has been simulated. The results show the attractiveness of the solution with estimated efficiency reaching 94.6%.