Practical Performance Analysis and Device Selection for Photovoltaic Multilevel Inverters Installations

The continuously increasing energy demands, and running out of the conventional fossil fuel have directed research towards developing renewable energy resources. Whereas, the industrial power electronics represents crucial part of the renewable energy conversion system. The energy efficiency possesses various challenges for the design of interfacing inverter. This paper presents a systematic approach for practical design and component selection for multilevel inverters in photovoltaic (PV) systems. The study includes the practical considerations of different sites of installations, PV cell modelling, technologies of various power electronic devices, accurate power losses modelling of power electronic devices and weighted efficiency prediction with considering practical mission profiles of the PV system. The traditional silicon (Si) insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is compared with silicon carbide (SiC) metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and gallium nitride (GaN) wideband gap (WBG) technologies. The proposed methodology is beneficial for PV system planners for evaluating technical and economic installations of PV systems. Moreover, optimized selection of power components and technologies can be easier using the proposed method.