SINGLE-PHASE CURRENT SOURCE INVERTER WITH PULSE AREA MODULATION SCHEME FOR SOLAR POWER CONDITIONER

In general, a single-phase current-fed PWM inverter using IGBTs has some unique advantages for small scale distributed utility-interactive power supply system as compared with voltage-fed PWM inverter. In particular, this is more suitable and acceptable for a non-isolated type utility-interactive power conditioner, which is going to be widely used for residential solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation system in Japan. However, this current-fed PWM inverter has a significant disadvantage. The output current of this inverter includes large harmonic contents when the inductance of smoothing reactor in its DC side is not large enough to eliminate its current ripple components of this inverter. In order to overcome this problem, a new conceptual pulse area modulation scheme for this inverter is introduced in difference with conventional PWM strategy. This paper presents a new effective control implementation of this PV power conditioner which is able to reduce the harmonic component in the output current produced by the single-phase current-fed PWM inverter even when the ripple current in the smoothing DC reactor is relatively large. The operating principle of the proposed control strategy introdued for this inverter system is described, and its simulation results are evaluated and discussed herein.