ARDUINO UNO based packed U cell inverter for photovoltaic application

Abstract

In the area of renewable energy uses, multilevel inverter still remain a subject matter for research and development to reduce its circuit complexity. Packed U Cell (PUC) multilevel inverter is a recent variant, extensively being used in photovoltaic applications as an alternative to meet the shortage in power demands focusing too much on decreasing the installation cost, increase system's efficiency, reliability and modularity. It is important to act to decrease this cost through designing a power conditioning circuit with lower cost. To meet this objective ARDUINO UNO is used in generating and providing pulse width modulated (PWM) signals to control the gates of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) that constitute the major building block of PUC multilevel inverter. MATLAB/Simulink is used in development of the photovoltaic system which includes PV modules, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) controller, DC-DC boost converter and PUC inverter. The simulation result validate the merits and performance of this proposed scheme.