2nd Canadian Solar Buildings Conference Calgary, June 10 14, 2007

DESIGN OF A 400W SINGLE-PHASE BUCK-BOOST INVETER FOR PV APPLICATIONS

Corresponding Author: Liuchen Chang Dept. of Elec. & Comp. Eng., University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada Phone: (506) 447-3145, Fax: (506) 453-3589, Email: LChang@unb.ca Co-authors: Yaosue Xue, Gene Guo Dept. of Elec. & Comp. Eng., University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada

Type of Paper: Refereed

ABSTRACT
A single-phase buck-boost inverter is proposed for grid-connected photovoltaic applications. Topologically, the proposed inverter has a low component count with only three power switches, while conventional PV inveters may require five switches in two-stage power conversions for the same functions. Functionally, the new inverter can adapt to a wide range of photovoltaic dc variations, lower or higher dc voltage compared to utility voltage, and in the meantime track the maximum power points of solar energy all in one single power stage. Analysis, simulation and design of such a 400W inveter are presented in this paper.

INTRODUCTION
Distributed generation (DG) systems are small modular devices close to electricity users, such as wind turbines, solar energy systems, fuel cells, micro gas turbines, and small hydro systems, as well as relevant control and energy storage systems. Such systems normally need inverters as interfaces between their ac loads and sources as shown in Figure 1, which depicts a typical renewable DG system using photovoltaic (PV) as energy source. DG inverters often experience a wide range of input voltage variations due to the fluctuations of energy sources, which impose stringent requirements for inverter topologies and controls.

they demand higher volume, weight and cost for small PV applications. Buck-boost inverters have the advantage of converting dc voltage higher or lower than the utility voltage without utilizing a line frequency tansformer. Two stage or multiple stage configurations are commonly used in buck-boost inverters (Xue et al., 2004). Such inverter systems have dc-dc or dc-ac-dc converters added to obtain an elevated dc voltage ahead of inversion. A two-stage buck-boost inverter can achieve a relatively high power capacity; nevertheless, the additional power stage requires more power components and thus higher costs. Single-stage buck-boost inverters perform voltage boosting and inverting at the same time and the instantaneous output voltage can be either higher or lower than the input voltage. Compared to two-stage buck-boost inverters, single-stage buck-boost inverters present a compact design with a good performance-cost ratio. In this paper a single-phase single-stage buck-boost inverter is presented. The simple three-switch circuit topology provides a low-cost solution with overall high efficiency for small PV applications. Operation principles, control methods and hardware design are discussed in following sections.

SYSTEM MODELING
The single-phase single-stage buck-boost inverter (Chang et al., 2006) is shown in Figure 2. It is composed of three MOSFET power switches, two mutually-coupling inductors, two power flow reverse blocking diodes, and an output LC filter.

Figure 1. Typical PV system configuration. Tranditional full-bridge inverters do not have the flexibility of handling a wide range of dc input voltages. Especially when the dc voltage is lower than the ac voltage, heavy line-frequency step-up transformers are required. Although these inverters demonstrate robust performance and high reliability,

2nd Canadian Solar Buildings Conference Calgary, June 10 14, 2007 System Dynamics The inverter system dynamics can be described by the state space equations in (4). The state variables are chosen to be the mutually-coupling inductor currents i L1 , i L 2 , the output ac inductor current iac , and the output capacitor voltage, vC . The control inputs of the system are defined by the PWM switching signal u pwm and the synchronizing signal

usync as well as the dc voltage vdc and grid voltage

vac as disturbance inputs. The inverter model defined in (4a) is a mixed-integer nonlinear system. Figure 2. Three-switch buck-boost inverter circuitry. Switch Modeling The fundamental principle of the inverter is characterized by a series of recharging and discharging operations. During discharging periods, the output current is provided by the mutual inductors and the output capacitor is recharged; during recharging periods, the output is supported ad continued by the output capacitor. Table 1 lists all possible combinations of switching logics, which in turn brings out the switching functions of S1 , S 2 and S3 defined in Equation (1).

x = f ( u, x ) where x = [iL1 iL 2 u = usync

which is defined as,

iac u pwm

vC ] vdc

(4)

vac

u1 = usync (1 u pwm ) u2 = (1 usync )(1 u pwm ) u3 = u pwm

where (1)

diL1 = u pwm vdc usync (1 u pwm ) vC dt di L2 L 2 = (1 usync )(1 u pwm ) vC + u pwm vdc dt dv C C = usync (1 u pwm ) iL1 (1 usync )(1 u pwm ) iL 2 iac dt diac L = vC vac dt L1
(4a) System Control Structure The system control consists of an inner-loop feedback current controller and an outer loop MPPT controller, which will be discussed later in details. Figure 3 illustrates the overall system control structure. Sinusoidal pulse-width modulation (SPWM) technique is adopted, which achieves good output waveform for this class of inverter with predefined spectra and without subharmonics as investigated previously (Xue, 2004). Closed-loop SPWM control is deployed to regulate ac output instantaneous current and to control SPWM duty cycle so that the output follows a sinusoidal reference current as accurately and as fast as possible.

1 L1 recharging u pwm = (f s in kHz ) 0 L1 discharging

(2)

1 positive half cycle usync = (f = 60 Hz ) 0 negtive half cycle

(3) Table 1 Switching logic table. S3 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 S1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 S2 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 Operation Modes Stop Discharge, (-) Discharge, (+) (not allowed) Recharge, (+)(-) (not allowed) (not allowed) (not allowed)

vdc
idc
* vdc
* iac

vac
usync

rr uPWM f ( u , x )

iL 2 vC

iL1 iac

iac
Figure 3.Overall system control block diagram.

2nd Canadian Solar Buildings Conference Calgary, June 10 14, 2007 It was found that, for a PI controller, there exists the tradeoff between the rise time and overshoot (Xue, 2004). Therefore, a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller is used, as given by Equation (5), for fast response, good tracking, and insensitivity to disturbance. maximum power from the PV, the optimal dc voltage is searched in real time using HCS method. The basic principle of HCS method is as follows: if the previous increment of Vdc reference results in an increase of Pdc, then the search of Vdc reference continues in the same direction, otherwise the search reverses its direction. In the controller, Vdc and Idc are sampled as the power feedback input and the Vdc reference is found in real time using the HCS method, which represents for the systems optimal operation point. In the inner loop a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is designed to force real Vdc to follow its reference by adjusting the load current demand for the inverter current controller. The FLC is highly insensitive to the system variations, including component uncertainties and disturbances, and non-linearity. It also demonstrates fast response for the system to reach equilibrium. The FLC block diagram is shown in Figure 4.

C (s ) = K p +

Ki + Kd s s

(5)

To operate well for the inverter with a wide range of dc voltage input of 55V to 300V, the PID controller gains have to adapt with the changes of the dc voltage and the ac current reference. Simulations were performed to tune the parameters for a less than 5% total harmonic distortion (THD) of output current for various operating conditions. In practical, a lookup table, as in Table 2, can be used to select the appropriate gain values depending on the dc voltage and the ac current reference. Table 2 PID gains for different operating points. Vdc (V) 50V 100V 100V 150V 150V 150V 200V 200V 300V 300V Iac (A) 1A 1A 5A 1A 2A 5A 1A 5A 1A 5A Kp 0.055 0.013 0.11 0.11 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.052 0.01 Ki 4e-5 5e-6 5e-6 3.5e-5 5e-6 5e-6 4e-6 4e-6 4e-5 3.5e-5 Kd 60e-6 10e-6 5e-6

vdc
* vdc
K

I dm
d dt

* I ac

Z 1

Figure 4. Fuzzy logic controller block diagram. 5e-6 5e-6 5e-6 5e-6 5e-6 15e-6 15e-6 The two inputs of FLC are dc voltage error e and its rate of change ce. The output of FLC is the incremental current demand Idm. In the fuzzification process, two input variables are normalized first and triangular membership functions are used, which are shown in Figure 5 along with the membership function for the output fuzzy variable. In the fuzzy inference engine, IF-THEN rules with AND logical operator are designed for fuzzy variables process, and MIN-MAX method is employed for fuzzy rule implication and aggregation. Table 3 lists a total of 49 fuzzy rules for the proposed FLC. For the defuzzification, the FLC employs the center of gravity method and the result is denormalized to output the desired Idm. In order to avoid the unnecessary frequent fluctuations of inverter output current, the control period of the FLC and the base value for Idm denormalization are chosen in a moderate pace. Table 3 Fuzzy logic rules. ce\ e PL PM PL PL PM PM PM PM PS PM PM ZR PS ZR NS ZR ZR NM ZR NS NL NS NS

Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) A maximum power point tracker is used to extract maximum power from the PV system. From the power output-voltage characteristics of a PV array, at a certain solar radiation there exists an optimal Vdc for which the power output is maximum. The reference ac current which corresponds to the maximum power is set by the maximum power point tracker. As shown in Figure 3, the MPPT controller uses fuzzy logic technique combined with hill climbing algorithm. Hill climbing searching (HCS) method is popular for MPPT control due to its simplicity and independence of system characteristics. In order to extract

2nd Canadian Solar Buildings Conference Calgary, June 10 14, 2007 PS ZR NS NM NL PM PM PM PS PS PM PM PS PS ZR PS PS PS ZR ZR ZR ZR ZR ZR NS NS NS NS NM NM NS NM NM NM NM NM NM NM NM NL

Figure 8. Output current waveform for Vdc= 100V.

Figure 5. Membership functions for fuzzy variables.

SIMULATION RESULTS
System-level simulations were performed using PSIM software to verify the proposed control strategy. Figure 6 to Figure 9 show the waveforms of the output current for different Vdc and Iac. Figure 10 demonstrates the output current changes from 3A to 5A in response to a dc voltage change from 150V to 200V.

Figure 9. Output current waveform for Vdc= 50V.

Figure 10. Output current jumps from 3A to 5A.

HARDWARE DESIGN
Figure 6. Output current waveform for Vdc= 300V. The single-phase buck-boost inverter in this paper is targeted to utility-tied small PV applications. Table 4 lists the major targeted specifications of a 400W PV inverter. This section presents design considerations during implementation. Table 4 Technical specifications of 400W PV inverter. Rated Power Maximum Power Rated DC Voltage Input DC Voltage Range Rated AC Output Output AC Voltage and Frequency Range Efficiency 400 W 600 W for 1 minute 200 V 55 ~ 300 V 120V/60Hz 105 ~ 132 V, r.m.s, 59.3 ~ 60.5 Hz 89%

Figure 7. Output current waveform for Vdc= 150V.

2nd Canadian Solar Buildings Conference Calgary, June 10 14, 2007 Output Total Demand Distortion Interconnection Standard <5.0% IEEE 1547 processes the signals, and sends to the microprocessor for control and protection purposes. The real time switch control signals are fed to power MOSFET through the drive circuit. The control circuit also provides immediate hardware protections for over-current, over-voltage, over-temperature faults and controller power failure. A functional block diagram of control circuit is shown in Figure 12 in the appendix. Microchips dsPIC33FJ64MC506 is selected to be the microcontroller of control circuit. It is a low-cost, 16-bit 40MIPS processor with DSP capabilities for advanced control algorithms. It has multi-channel fast ADC and PWM modules. The current control and MPPT algorithms are programmed using standard C language. Software-based system protections are also embedded in the control codes.

Power Circuit Design Due to the nature of this inverter circuitry, power components need to be rearranged to simplify the control circuit. As shown in Figure 11 in the appendix, switch S2 is repositioned such that S2 and S3 share a common ground. As a result, S2 and S3 can use non-isolated drive circuits and one isolated MOSFET drive circuit is only needed for S1. One of major tasks is to design the flyback transformer, which is presented as follows. In the application here, the fly-back transformer is actually two highly-coupled inductors with equal inductances and turns, L1 = L2 and N 1 = N 2 . A simple analytical method, based on input-output power balance, is used to find the mathematical control-to-output solution (Xue, 2004) and to determine the inductance value. The value of flyback inductance for discontinuous-current mode (DCM) operation is calculated using Equation (6).

CONCLUSION
The proposed buck-boost inverter offers many advantages as compared to traditional two-stage buck-boost inverters. Its low component count and compact design will help to reduce the size and cost of the inverter. The ability to convert wide range of input dc voltage is very important in small PV applications. Fuzzy logic based MPPT and closedloop current control offer fast and reliable performance. Simulation results show that the inverter is feasible for the specified dc voltage and power levels. A 400W PV inverter system is currently under implementation.

L=

M 2Vs2 4 Pf s

(6)

where M is modulation index, Vs is dc voltage , P is the power input and fs is switching frequency, 24kHz. Modulation index, M can be calculated from Equation (7). In this application, we need to select an appropriate inductance value to make sure the inverter normally works for the DC input voltage range from 55V to 300V and provides rated power output of at rated voltage.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for its financial support to this project.

2V Vs + 2V

REFERENCES
Chang, L., Liu, Z., Xue, Y., and Guo, Z., A novel buck-boost inverter for photovoltaic systems, in Proc. CSBC06, Montreal, QC, Canada, Aug. 20-24, 2006, [CD-ROM]. Xue, Y., Chang, L., Baekhj Kjaer, S., Bordonau, J. and Shimizu, T., Topologies of single-phase inverters for small distributed power generators: an overview, IEEE Trans. Power Electronics, vol. 19, pp. 1305-1314, Sept. 2004. Xue, Y., Analysis, Simulation, and Test of A Novel Buck-Boost Inverters, University of New Brunswick, M.Sc. Thesis, Jan. 2004.

(7)

The fly-back transformer design depends on which current operation mode is applied to the inverter, DCM or continuous current mode (CCM). For the same output power, DCM requires less inductance and reduces transformer size but operates with higher losses and lower efficiency due to higher peak current. The tradeoff between transformer size and power supply efficiency depends on the detail application requirements. For this application DCM was selected in order to get smaller transformer size and maximize the control capability of the inverter. Furthermore the peak short-circuit current must be less than the maximum pulse current of the MOSFET. The final inductance values were determined to be 150H corresponding to a peak current of 28A. Control Circuit Design The control circuit reads the dc voltage, dc current, ac voltage, ac current, and temperature signals,

2nd Canadian Solar Buildings Conference Calgary, June 10 14, 2007

APPENDIX

Figure 11. Inverter power circuit and controller interface.

OI

Figure 12. Controller hardware block diagram.

OT