Impact of Choice of Neutral Point Clamped and H-Bridge Multilevel Inverters for PV Systems

Abstract

The exploitation of solar energy and the universal interest in photovoltaic systems have increased nowadays due to galloping energy consumption and current geopolitical and economic issues. This has led to high technical and economic requirements. The PV system still faces major obstacles such as high cost and low efficiency compared to other renewable technologies. In addition, the photovoltaic system suffers from the rate of undesirable harmonics of the generated power which could alter the quality of energy and the performance requested by users. In order to remedy this problem, the use of the multi-level inverter is in these cases one of the most promising solutions. Indeed, the multi-level technology seems to be well suited to photovoltaic applications to help fill the need for several sources on the DC side of the converter. The technical performance and reliability of the multi-level inverter used to connect the PV modules to the electrical power distribution networks can improve and make profitable the power produced. In this work, we compare two multi-level inverter topologies for PV systems: H-Bridge (HB) and Neutral Point Clamped (NPC). The comparison between these inverters is based on the criteria of spectral quality of the output voltage and the complexity of the power circuits.