2014 Annual IEEE India Conference (INDICON)

Modeling and Simulation of Hybrid MPPT

Based Standalone PV System with Upgraded
Multilevel Inverter
A. Rout, S. Samantara, G. K. Dash, S. Choudhury, R Sharma, B. Dash

Abstract This paper presents modeling and simulation of a

standalone PV (Photo-Voltaic) system with upgraded multilevel
Inverter using MATLAB/SIMULINK. The modeling includes a
25 level inverter which claims that the total harmonic distortion
(THD) reduced to approximately 3%. The proposed 25 level
inverter uses only 12 numbers of switches which is very less than
that of diode clamped, capacitor clamped and cascaded H-Bridge
multilevel inverter (MLI). In this paper a hybrid MPPT is used to
extract maximum power from PV string/Cell at different
irradiance. It also gives a comparative analysis of THD with and
without Boost converter based PV system.
Index Terms Boost Converter, MPP, MPPT, MLI, PV
System, THD

I. INTRODUCTION

st

N the 21 Century, it is a big challenge to meet the power

demand with the existing conventional resources. To meet
the power demand the PV system is rapidly penetrating to the
energy market because of its favorable nature like clean, safe ,
abundant and could serve the society for longer period.
The solar panel is the intermediate which converts the solar
energy into electrical energy and the power generated by the
panel generally depends on the panel temperature and
irradiance. To get the required voltage/power level, the panels
are connected in series which is facing towards south and sun
is moving from east to west, so there is a variation in the panel
temperature and in the irradiance. As a result power variation
occurs. In order to get a constant level of output, maximum
power point tracking (MPPT) technology is introduced. There
are different types of MPPT algorithm like true seeking
A. Rout is with the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering,
ITER, SOA University, Odisha, India (e-mail: coolrohan.boy@gmail.com).
S. Samantara is with the Department of Electrical & Electronics
Engineering, ITER, SOA University, Odisha, India (e-mail:
sidharth1oct@gmail.com).
G.K. Dash is with the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering,
ITER, SOA University, Odisha, India (e-mail: dash.gopalkrishna07
@gmail.com).
S. Choudhury is with the Department of Electrical Instrumentation &
Control Engineering, ITER, SOA University, Odisha, India, (e-mail:
satishchoudhury@soauniversity.ac.in)
R. Sharma is with the Department of Electrical Instrumentation & Control
Engineering, ITER, SOA University, Odisha, India, (e-mail:
renusharma@soauniversity.ac.in)
B. Dash is with the Department of Electrical Instrumentation & Control
Engineering, ITER, SOA University, Odisha, India, (e-mail:
byomakeshdash@soauniversity.ac.in)

978-1-4799-5364-6/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

methods and quasi seeking methods [1] are used in the PV

system. The P&O (hill-climbing method) method is used in
many cases in which small perturbations are introduced in the
system in order to vary the operating point such that the
maximum power point is achieved [8]. The drawback of this
method is described by [9], that they can easily lose track of
Maximum Power Point (MPP) if irradiation changes rapidly
and an alternative to the P & O method that is Incremental
Conductance (IC) is proposed in [9]. The method is more
adaptive to sudden change in atmospheric conditions. Many
people uses parasitic capacitance method to get Maximum
Power Point (MPP) but this method leads to complexity in
control circuit [10]. In [2] a feed forward fuzzy based
algorithm is used to change the duty ratio of the converter so
as to match the output voltage of PV cell with the
corresponding voltage at MPP. This paper proposes a hybrid
MPPT which uses advanced P&O with IC and it is found that
the tracking algorithm is suitable for any insolation/irradiance.
The PV system generally employs boost converter along
with an inverter [3] to supply AC power to the utility. The
converter/inverter uses power semiconductor switches for
their required operation. The tracking algorithm changes the
duty cycle of the converter in such way that the PV cell output
voltage equals the voltage corresponding to maximum point at
any irradiance/insolation. Use of converter/inverter in a PV
system introduces harmonics to the utility which deteriorate
the power quality. Many topologies are proposed in the
literature to reduce harmonic contained in the utility
voltage/current. A digital PI current control algorithm is used
in a five level neutral clamped inverter to achieve high
dynamic performance with low THD [4]. A new type of
multilevel inverter with less number of switches is proposed in
[11] to reduce THD. To produce multilevel ac output, different
level of dc input is provided by means of several PV strings
[5].
In this paper an upgraded multistring 25-level inverter is
proposed, that uses only 12 numbers of switches which is very
less than that of conventional multilevel inverter. It is found
that the harmonic contain in the utility voltage is about 3% and
also meets the IEEE-519 standard. In this paper a comparison
has been made on THD with and without using boost
converter along with the PV cell/string. The model of PV
system with and without boost converter is shown in Fig.1 and
Fig.2 respectively.

The PV strings are directly connected to the inverter

without boost converter. The proposed model is shown in
Fig.4.

Fig. 1. PV System without Boost Converter

MPPT
Boost Converter 1

MPPT
Boost Converter 2

Proposed
25-level
Inverter

MPPT
Boost Converter 3

MPPT

Load

Boost Converter 4

Fig. 2. PV System with Boost Converter

Fig. 4. Matlab/Simulink diagram of PV system without Boost Converter

II. MODELING OF PV SYSTEM

A. Modeling of PV Cell
A PV cell is a device made of semiconductor materials
which converts solar radiation into electricity. Equivalent
circuit of the PV cell is shown in Fig.3.

LOAD

Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit of PV Cell

Applying Kirchhoffs Current Law at the junction of

Insolation current Iph, Diode current ID, shunt resistance Rsh
and the series resistance Rse, we get

I = I ph I D I sh

(1)

C. Proposed Twenty five level Multilevel Inverter

The 25-level proposed inverter uses only 12 switches
compared to other type of conventional multilevel inverter
which uses 48 switches and 12 separate dc sources. But in
proposed inverter the requirement of separate dc source is only
four. Separate dc supply to the MLI is provided using PV
strings. To maximize the voltage level the number of dc
voltage cell should be equal to the number of cascaded submultilevel cell. i.e.
c1 = c 2 = ....c m
(3)
Where c1 is the number of dc voltage source in the 1st cell,
c2 is the number of dc voltage source in the 2nd cell, m is the
number of cascaded sub-multilevel cells.
In this model c1 = c 2 = c = 2 and value of dc voltage in
the 1st and 2nd sub multilevel cells are 19.16V and 95.83V
respectively. In the proposed model the value of 2nd sub
multilevel cell is five times greater than that of 1st sub
multilevel cell according to (4).

Vdc 2 = (2c + 1) k 1 Vdc1

V + IR se V + IR se
1
I = I ph I 0 exp
(2)
V
R
T
sh

Where I is the Cell current, I0 is the reverse saturation

current, V is the cell voltage,

VT =

KT
is the thermal
q

voltage, K is the Boltzmann constant, T is the temperature in

Kelvin, q is the charge of an electron.
B. PV system without Boost Converter
In this paper the modeling and simulation of PV system is
done using MATLAB/SIMULINK. Four PV strings are used
for the modeling. Out of 4 strings, two strings are containing
34 PV cells each in a series parallel fashion to provide output
voltage of 19.16V each, whereas other two strings contain 170
PV cells in series parallel fashion to provide output voltage of
95.83V each. The total rating of the PV array is 230V, 1kW.

Fig. 5. Circuit diagram of proposed twenty-five level inverter

(4)

Here k=2= number of cascaded cell, Vdc1 is the dc input

voltage of the 1st cell in volt and Vdc2 is the dc input voltage of
the 2nd cell in volt.
The number of level is equal to N L = (2c + 1) = 25 .
Circuit diagram of the proposed MLI is shown in the Fig.5.
Table I provides the information about the logical switching
sequence for making twenty five levels in the output voltage.
m

TABLE I

Logical Switching Sequence for MLI

S S S S T T T T T T T T
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

VLOAD

1
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
0

12Vdc
11Vdc
10Vdc
9Vdc
8Vdc
7Vdc
6Vdc
5Vdc
4Vdc
3Vdc
2Vdc
Vdc
0
-Vdc
-2Vdc
-3Vdc
-4Vdc
-5Vdc
-6Vdc
-7Vdc
-8Vdc
-9Vdc
-10Vdc
-11Vdc
-12Vdc

0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
0
1

1
1
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
0
1
1
1
1
1

1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

1
1
0
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0

0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
1

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

1
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0

1
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0

0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
1

0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
1

D. PV System with Boost Converter and MPPT

PV strings are connected to the load through boost
converter and MLI. Initially the PV module provides the
required amount of voltages to the dc-dc converters using
proposed MPPT techniques. Converter output is fed to MLI
to supply power to the AC load.
In this system seven PV strings of voltage rating 19.16V
each are used for the purpose of modeling. The basic
components of the given PV system are
1. Boost Converter
2. MPPT
3. MLI
1) Modeling of Boost Converter
The state space model of boost converter [7] using
Matlab/Simulink is shown in Fig.6.

Fig. 6. State space model of Boost Converter

The state equations are given in (5)-(6).

(1 D ) V + 1 V
di L
r
iL
=
c
dt
L
L
L
dVc (1 D )
1
=
iL
Vc
dt
C
CR L

(5)
(6)

Where iL is the current through the inductor in A, Vc is the

voltage across the capacitor in V, D is the duty ratio. The
parameters involved in the design of boost converter are
given in the Table II.
TABLE II

Design parameters of Boost Converter

S.N
1.

PARAMETER
Inductance L (mH)

VALUES
1

2.

Capacitance C (F)

62

3.

Inductance series resistance(r)

0.1

4.

Load resistance R()

10

5.

Switching frequency Fs (kHz)

50

The duty ratio D is given by (7)

D=

Vout Vin
Vout

(7)

Where Vout is the desired output voltage in Volt and Vin is

the input voltage in Volt.
2) MPPT algorithm
The hybrid MPPT used in the PV system uses both
advanced P&O and IC algorithm simultaneously to track
maximum power irrespective of any changes in irradiance.
The algorithm is shown in Fig.7. The advanced P&O
algorithm [12] estimates reference voltage between every
two perturbs, which significantly increases the tracking
speed without disturbing the tracking accuracy. In IC
algorithm [6] step size is generally fixed. Larger is the step
size larger is steady state oscillation, which leads to low
efficiency. Such dilemma is solved by using variable step
size
instead
of
fixed
step
size.

Fig. 7. Hybrid MPPT Algorithm used for PV System

In this paper the accurate duty cycle to get MPP is

provided to the dc-dc converter by comparing the updated
pulses from both the algorithm.
3) Multi-level Inverter
The proposed MLI is already discussed in sec. II.C.
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
A. PV System without Boost Converter
The output voltage waveform is shown in Fig.8. It is
observed that the proposed MLI has twenty five level output
with twelve switches. The model makes switching loss less
as compared to the conventional multi-level inverters because
of less number of switches.
Fig. 10. Output voltage waveform of MLI with boost converter

The harmonic content in the output voltage is found

through FFT analysis. It is measured by THD and is found
to be 12.14%. The FFT analysis is shown in Fig.11.

Fig. 8. Output voltage waveform of twenty-five level inverter

The harmonic content in the output voltage is found

through FFT analysis. It is measured by THD and is found to
be 3.21%. The FFT analysis is shown in Fig.9.

Fig. 11. THD of 25- level inverter with boost converter

IV. CONCLUSION

Fig. 9. THD of 25-level inverter without boost converter

B. PV System with Boost Converter

The output voltage across the MLI has 25 levels output
with twelve switches. The MLI is fed from the output of the
boost converter, which has already been discussed in the
earlier section. The output voltage waveform is shown Fig.10

This paper proposes a standalone PV system with and

without boost converter using 25-level inverter. The filtration
of lower order harmonics is a challenging issue. So as to
reduce the harmonic contents the level of the output voltage is
increased up to 25 levels by proper arrangement of multilevel
inverter with reduced number of switches. The comparative
analysis of THD between the two system discussed in this
paper says that the THD is increased by introducing the DCDC converter which is approximately found to be 12% but it is
less as compared to the other conventional multilevel inverters
used for PV system . It also reduces the rating of the PV cell.
The rating of the PV cell is higher in the system when the dcdc converter is not included.

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[2]

[3]
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