2007 IEEE Canada Electrical Power Conference

The Application of the Cascaded Multilevel Converters in Grid Connected Photovoltaic Systems
S. Ali Khajehoddin*, Alireza Bakhshai+, and Praveen Jain *khajeddin@ieee.org, talireza.bakhshai@queensu.ca, praveen.jain@queensu.ca
Energy and Power Electronics Applied Research Laboratory (ePEARL) ECE Department, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

Abstract- Unique features of multi-level converters have reas significant alternatives for solid-state power converting units, even in the low and medium power range. The fact that Multilevel converters need several DC sources in the DC side, makes them attractive for Photovoltaic(PV) applications. This paper presents a new control strategy to control Cascaded Multilevel converters in a multi-string configuration for single phase grid connected systems. Eventually, simulation results are provided to validate the control system under various insolation

cently nominated them

PV

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2-leN7el converters
Multilevel converters
With DC-DC Converter

conditions.

I. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, the main energy supplier of the worldwide economy is fossil fuel. This, however has led to many problems such as global warming and air pollution. Therefore, with regard to the worldwide trend of green energy, solar power technology has become one of the most promising energy resources. The number of PV installations has had an exponential growth [1], mainly due to the governments and utility companies who support the idea of the green energy. One of the most important types of PV installation is the grid connected inverter configurations. These grid connected PV systems can be categorized from two viewpoints: PV cell and inverter configurations, see Fig. 1. The PV cell arrangements fall into four broad groups: centralized technology, string technology, multi-string technology and AC-module and AC-cell technologies [2]. All approaches have advantages and disadvantages [2], [3]; and will compromise various attributes such as harmonic

Without DC-DC Coinveer

Withisolation

Witlio-Lt isolaton

On the HFside
Fig. 1. PV systems categorized by different PV cell configurations and inverter types.

generation, complexity, efficiency, flexibility, reliability, safety, modularity and cost. However, for residential PV installations, topologies which are able to generate better output quality, the most suitable configuration seems to be the string or multi- while operating at lower switching frequency. This implies string technologies where one or more strings of PV cells are lower switching dissipation and higher efficiency. Moreover, connected to a single inverter. Using this type of configuration, this topology utilizes switches with lower breakdown voltage; there will be no losses associated with the string diodes therefore, it can be used in higher power applications at compared to centralized technology. Moreover, independent lower cost. It is worth mentioning that although the number Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) is possible for of switches in this approach is higher than other two level all strings which might be installed in different sizes and topologies, for a sufficient high number of levels, the output orientations. This also increases the overall efficiency under filter can be avoided which means less weight, cost and space. special circumstances like partial shadowing. On the other hand, even with the same size of filter at the There are different approaches to implement string and output, the switching frequency can be decreased which means multi-string topologies. Usually, these modules consist of a higher efficiency. In general, a greater number of switches in solar array and a DC to DC converter controlled by a MPPT multilevel converters can be justified since the semiconductor algorithm. Afterwards, the output of the DC/DC converters cost decreases at a much greater rate than the filter components build up a DC voltage which is then converted to AC by means cost. This projects the total cost of multilevel converters to be of an li426ell T35o^sX0tt use multilevel296omparable or even lower than that of two-level converters.

2007 IEEE Canada Electrical Power Conference

Among various multilevel topologies, the most important [5]: Diode-Clamped Multilevel Converter(DCMC) [6] and Flying Capacitors Multilevel converters (FCMC) and Cascaded Multilevel Converters (CMC). The first, simplest and the most modular topology is CMC. However, the main problem associated with the CMC topology is the need for isolated DC sources which are not usually available without the use of transformers. In some specific applications such as photovoltaic systems, separate dc sources exist and can be used in the CMC topology [7], [8]. A diversity of multilevel converter topologies have been used in photovoltaic applications [9], [10], [11] and a comparison of some topologies is presented in [12]. This paper presents a new control strategy to control Cascaded Multilevel converters in a multi-string configuration for single phase grid connected systems. This topology generates high quality output current under any circumstances specifones are

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extra DC-DC converter stage which causes some limitation in the performance but definitely reduces the overall cost and efficiency. Simulation results are provided to validate the proposed control system.

ically in partial shading, while tracking the MPP of each string independently. The topology does not consist of any

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II. CASCADED MULTILEVEL CONVERTERSWUI--------

A. Basic Principle of Operation The Cascaded Multilevel Converters (CMC) are simply a number of conventional two-level bridges, whose AC terminals are simply connected in series to synthesize the output waveforms. Fig. 2(a) shows the power circuit for a five-level inverter with two cascaded cells. The CMC needs several independent DC sources which may be obtained from batteries, fuel cells or solar cells. Through different combinations of the four switches of each cell, each converter level can generate three different voltage outputs, +VdC, 0, -Vd, The AC output is the sum of the individual converter outputs. The number of outputphase voltage levels is defined by n = 2N+1, where N is the number of DC sources. For instance the output range of the Fig. 2(a) swings from -2Vd, to +2Vd, with five levels. If the straightforward fundamental frequency modulation technique is chosen it can be shown that, the charge and discharge of the cells in different levels will not be equal which results in capacitor voltage unbalance or unequal loading of input sources. It is possible to utilize CMCs without input sources as a reactive power compensator. But, if the output load in a CMC is resistive, these capacitors should be connected to "isolated DC sources" to supply the real power.

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. The modularity of this topology is an important feature, and because of that some redundancy is possible by using more cells per phase than is actually required. . Because of its modular structure, control is more easily

* Compared to other multilevel topologies, CMC requires least number of components, because there is no need for B. Features diodes and flying capacitors. clamping capn idsadfyn aaios In summary, the advantages and disadvantages of the CMC 2 os are as folloWS: 1) Pros. . Each cell needs an isolated DC supply and normally this * Device voltage sharing is automatic and there is no requires some sort of complicated transformer arrangerestriction on switching patterns. ment. * CMC has smaller dv0/dt compared to series connected The aforementioned disadvantage is not an issue in Photo2-level. 29voltaic applications, because discrete strings of PV modules

applied.

2007 IEEE Canada Electrical Power Conference

ID

IPV

~~~~~+
xiV".
Fig. 4.

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ip
Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit for a PV cell.

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Vector diagram of the output power circuit shown in Fig. 2(a).

provide isolated input voltage sources. As shown in Fig. 1, in photovoltaic applications the inverter stage can be implemented with or without a DC-DC converter. However, in this paper the topology without a DC-DC stage is examined. There are different options for modulation of multilevel converters [13]. One of the simplest strategies is the phase shifted carrier modulation technique where the n carriers of the full bridge cascaded converters are phase shifted by 180/n degrees, as shown in Fig. 2(b). This modulation technique is utilized in this paper due to its simplicity. However, it can be shown that under partial shading the harmonic cancellation is not as perfect as case but but still still much a two level as the the ideal ideal case much better than a

Using this PV array model it is possible to simulate the dynamic performance of the power and control systems and MPPT strategy in response to the radiation and temperature step changes.
IV. POWER CONTROL ALGORITHM A. Basic Principle of Operation The basic structure of the grid connected multilevel multi-

volstring

PV system is shown in Fig. 2(a). Since the output

conerfect

better.than

and he te rte of th ce he on the PV arrays has to be controlled to be held on the Maximum Power This objective can be satisfied simply by setting the DC twolevelPoint.

and the temperature of the cells the operating point of the PV

III. SIMULATION MODEL FOR PV CELL The building block of the PV array is the solar cell, which is basically a p - n semiconductor junction that directly converts light energy into electricity. The equivalent circuit is shown in Fig. 3. To simulate a PV array, a PV simulation model which was obtained using PSIM(Power SIMulator) software, was used based on the following equation:

nplph - npIrs exP ( A -p i (1) kTAlPl nhs where Ipv is the PV array output current (A); Vpv is the PV array output voltage (V); ns is the number of cells connected in series; np is the number of strings connected in parallel; q is the charge of an electron; k is Boltzmanns constant; A is the pn junction ideality factor; T is the cell temperature (K); and Irs is the cell reverse saturation current. The factor A in Eq. (1) determines the cell deviation from the ideal p - n junction characteristics. The ideal value ranges between 1 and 5 and in our case, A equals 2.15. The cell reverse saturation current Ir varies with temperature and the photocurrent Iph depends on the solar radiation and the cell
IPV
=
V

voltage of the capacitors to a reference voltage provided by a MPPT algorithm. Examination of different MPPT algorithms seems to be out of place in this paper and thus it is assumed that a reference DC voltage is provided for each string. Since the power delivered by each full bridge converter can be controlled by switches, the power provided by the DC capacitors is controllable. On the other hand, at any specific time the power supplied to the DC capacitors is known because the voltage of the PV arrays is fixed by the DC voltage of the capacitors. Therefore, whenever the capacitor voltage needs to be increased/decreased, it is possible to decrease/increase the power delivered to the power circuit and the difference of the active power controls the voltages of the DC capacitors. Fig. 4 shows the vector diagram of the voltages and the current of the output power circuit. It is desired to have the output current in phase with the grid voltage in order to have zero reactive power delivered to the grid. By simply controlling the angle of this current and the grid voltage, reactive power compensation is feasible which is not examined here. It can be shown that the power delivered to the grid is:

XL Therefore, by means of changing the output voltage of the multilevel inverter the power delivered to the grid can be temperature as shown in the following equation: controlled. If the power supplied by each string is Pi, the total power sent to the grid is Pto =ZPi. The power by each string is Pi 'ph =[sr+ i(- S) (2) supplied = V0i.IL cos f and the angle is cosy [Iser k~(T Tr)1100 Vgrid/ZV0i. Therefore, Pi V0i Pt0t/ZV0i which where Isc is the cell short-circuit current at reference means that if the input power provided by a string is changed temperature and radiation, ki is the short-circuit current tem- the output voltage of that cell has to be adjusted accordingly. perature coefficient, and s is the solar radiation in m/2.298Howvr as shown by the dotted line in Fig. 4, if the output

V Vi XL sin ,o

(3)

2007 IEEE Canada Electrical Power Conference

Compensator
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Fig. 5. Control system block diagram of cell #1 of the circuit shown in Fig. 2(a)

voltage of one cell is reduced, the output voltage of other cells have to be increased to keep the output current in phase with the grid voltage. It can be shown that for a given input power, grid voltage and inductance, the output voltage of the cells will be set to:
tPtot

Pi

grid

Vjri

(4)

B. Control Strategy As shown in Fig. 5, the control system consists of different sections. The main objective is to generate output voltages according to Eqn. (4) so that each string contributes its maximum available power to the grid. This task is accomplished by the main control loop. Based on the calculated input power, the reference output current is found which will be multiplied by a sinusoidal waveform in phase with the grid voltage. The difference of this reference current and the measured output current is used for the feedback loop which in turn can be used as a reference for the output voltage. Since there is more than one cell that builds the output voltage each cell generates an output voltage equal to V0o, =ZV0i. Pil/Pt0. Therefore, the measured feedback current is scaled down by a contribution factor as shown in the block diagram in Fig. 5. By increasing the reference current signal, the output power V. SIMULATION RESULTS will be increased. Therefore, to regulate the DC voltage of In order to demonstrate the impact of the shading and the capacitors it is sufficient to feedback the error of the capacitor voltage to the current loop as demonstrated in the irradiance level on the performance of the proposed system, a block diagram. Because of the contribution factor which is simulation is setup as shown in Table I. It is worth mentioning that the output voltage of the PV a feed-forward compensation, and because of the existence of two control loops for each cell, the control system can string arrays should be chosen based on the grid nominal become unstable. Specifically this happens in the transient voltage and the minimum desired operating power of each state when the dc capacitor voltage overshoots. Escalation299cell. If the power generated by all strings are equal, the output

of the PV voltage leads to a reduction in power generation, which may even descend to zero value. When the input power becomes zero the contribution factor also becomes zero. This is multiplied by the feedback signal and then, causes the current reference signal to become negative, which r leads to instability. Once this occurs, the stabilizer switches the reference signal to be a constant positive number, which discharges the DC capacitors and causes the control system to exit from the unstable state. If the fundamental components of the grid voltage and current are in phase, the instantaneous power injected into the grid equals to: 5 ttlcs2vrd) Po - COS(2wgridt)) (5) This power has to be drawn from the input sources, which leads to an oscillation in the voltage and power of the PV arrays. By increasing the size of the capacitors, this oscillation can be limited to a desired value. To reduce the output current harmonics, a compensation factor is multiplied by the output reference voltage. In the end this compensation factor is divided by the average capacitor voltage to limit the control signal to [-1, 11. Nevertheless, this oscillation is not desired because it causes the PV arrays to operate slightly off of the MPP.

2007 IEEE Canada Electrical Power Conference

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Fig. 6. Simulation results for a step change in the input power when the grid voltage (180V) is larger than the voltage of the individual PV strings(120V).

Fig. 7. Simulation results when the grid voltage is smaller than the voltage of the individual PV strings.

can be calculated. Fig. 7 demonstrates the dynamic performance of the PV system for a step changes in irradiance. At the time t=O.5s the insolation of the second PV string is decreased by 50 percent, and then at t=O.Ss the normal irradiance is applied. At ACKNOWLEDGMENT t=0.75s the whole insolation is decreased by 70 percent and it can be observed that the harmonic components of the output The authors would like to thank the contribution of the Solar current are not increased in case of partial shading. Without300Buildings Research Network for their support.

voltage of all cells will be equal. In this case, by referring to Eq. (3) it can be observed that the inverter output voltage has to be slightly larger than the grid voltage as shown in Fig. 6 and the DC voltage of an individual string is at least Vg--d/N where N is the number of strings. However, as discussed before, in case of of partial shading the output voltage of the the output voltae sting s y d B tthi thi Sntposstble nt .ge of the other cells have toices.Btt1 other e to is desig not becase because the DC voltage As sh ing is will creas the whole output voltage. As shown in Fig. 6 this will increase the harmonic components of the output current. In order to avoid this problem, the minimum power of PV strings should be selected and then the DC output voltage of the PV strings

the stabilizer section in the controller, the system becomes unstable after the irradiance decrease at t=0.7s.
VI. CONCLUSION

shadedo willcdecreasetiacdingly, oaedtrigwlincore Dcell hvo inreahstring

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the system under all environmental conditions. The simulation results show that for partial shading and different input powers, the system is able to inject the maximum available power to the grid.

the paper presents a new control strategy for cascaded multilee cnetrs Tocos h best etsz h PV Vsrns size for the strings a converters. To choose the elevel i gui
o

nrdcino dfeetpsil hie o Afe- in re Photovoltaic applications, it is shown that the Cascaded Multilevel Converter is a suitable choice for PV systems. Then after describing the basic principle of operation,

2007 IEEE Canada Electrical Power Conference

TABLE I SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Parameters DC Capacitors Coupling inductor Switching frequency Number of Cascaded Cells

Grid voltage

Values 5000 ,u 500 ,

2 KHz
2 110 V

[4] G. Walker and P. Sernia, "Cascaded DC/DC converter connection of photovoltaic modules," IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 19, pp. 1130-1139, 2004. [5] J. Rodriguez, J. Lai, and F. Peng, "Multilevel inverters: A survey of topologies, controls, and applications," IEEE Transactions on Industrial [6] A. Nabae, I. Takahashi, and H. Akagi, "A new neutral-point clamped

[7] M. Calais, V. G. Agelidis, L. J. Borle, and M. S. Dymond, "A transformerless five level cascaded inverter based single phase Electronics vol. 3, pp. system," Power Specialists Conference, PESC,photovoltaic

Electronics, vol. 49, pp. 724-738, 2002. PWM inverter," IEEE Trans. Ind. App., vol. 17, pp. 518-523, 1981.
1173-1178, June 2000.

Grid frequency MPP current for each string

MPP voltage for each string

60 Hz 15 Amp
120 V

MPP for each string

1800 W

[8] 0. Alonso, P. Sanchis, E. Gubia, and L. Marroyo, "Cascaded hbridge multilevel converter for grid connected photovoltaic generators with independent maximum power point tracking of each solar array,"
vol. 2, pp. 731-735, June 2003. [9] S. Alepuz, S. Busquets-Monge, J. Bordonau, J. Gago, D. Gonzalez, and J. Balcells, "Interfacing renewable energy sources to the utility grid using a three-level inverter," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1504-1511, Oct. 2006. [10] H. Ertl, J. W. Kolar, and F. C. Zach, "A novel multicell DC-AC converter for applications in renewable energy systems," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 1048-1057, Oct. 2002. [11] F. S. Kang, S. J. Park, S. E. Cho, C. U. Kim, and T. Ise, "Multilevel PWM inverters suitable for the use of stand-alone photovoltaic power systems," IEEE Transaction on Energy Conversion, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 906-915, Dec. 2005. [12] M. Calais, V. Agelidis, and M. Meinhardt, "Multilevel converters for single-phase grid connected photovoltaic systems: an overview," Proc. IEEE International Symp. Industrial Electronics, pp. 224-229, 1998. [13] D. G. Holmes and T. A. Lipo, "Pulse width modulation for power converters," IEEE Press Series on Power Engineering, 2003.

PESC'03. IEEE 34th Annual Power Electronics Specialist Conference,

REFERENCES
[1] F. Blaabjerg, R. Teodorescu, M. Liserre, and A. V. Timbus, "Overview of control and grid synchronization for distributed power generation systems," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1398-1409, Oct. 2006. [2] S. B. Kjaer, J. K. Pedersen, and F. Blaabjerg, "A review of single-phase grid-connected inverters for photovoltaic modules," IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 1292-1306, Sept./Oct. 2005. [3] Y. Xue, L. Chang, S. B. Kjaer, J. Bordonau, and T. Shimizu, "Topologies of single-phase inverters for small distributed power generators: an overview," IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 1305-1314, Sept. 2004.

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