IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 52, NO.
4, AUGUST 2005
Flyback Inverter Controlled by Sensorless Current
MPPT for Photovoltaic Power System
Nobuyuki Kasa, Member, IEEE, Takahiko Iida, and Liang Chen
Abstract—This paper presents a flyback inverter controlled by
sensorless current maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for
a small photovoltaic (PV) power system. Although the proposed
system has small output power such as 300 W, a few sets of small
PV power systems can be easily connected in parallel to yield
higher output power. When a PV power system is constructed with
a number of small power systems, the total system cost will in-
crease and will be a matter of concern. To overcome this difficulty,
this paper proposes a PV system that uses no expensive dc current
sensor but utilizes the method of estimating the PV current from
the PV voltage. The paper shows that the application of this novel
sensorless current flyback inverter to an MPPT-operated PV
system exhibits satisfactory MPPT performance similar to the
one exhibited by the system with a dc current sensor as well. This
paper also deals with the design method and the operation of the
unique flyback inverter with center-tapped secondary winding.
Index Terms—Digital signal processors, photovoltaic (PV) power
systems, pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) inverters.
I. INTRODUCTION
P HOTOVOLTAIC (PV) systems have been developed to
overcome an energy crisis in terms of ecology. The PV
system consists of the PV array and the PV power conditioner,
and the PV power conditioner usually can be subdivided
into both a dc–dc converter to control the dc voltage and a
voltage-source inverter to connect to the ac utility grid line.
Since a PV or a solar cell module can generate rather small
electric power of approximately 100 W per unit square meter
under fine weather conditions, the PV power conditioner adopts
the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique to utilize
the PV array efficiently. The PV voltage and PV current are
required to calculate the PV output power for the MPPT oper-
ation. Therefore, an expensive dc current sensor is absolutely
required, thereby introducing the problem of high expense for
the PV small power system. As listed in the literature [1]–[10],
there are a number of main circuit configurations for the PV
power conditioners suitable for a rating less than 1 kW, and we
also had proposed a kind of buck–boost-type inverter that had
two sets of ac semiconductor switches to convert dc power to
ac power [4]. However, this proposed inverter required two sets
of the dc sources of PV arrays, which, respectively, supplied
the positive and negative half-cycle current to the ac utility grid
line. This proposed inverter circuit has been improved to “one
dc-source-type inverter” as reported in the literature [11]–[13].
Manuscript received May 19, 2004; revised October 11, 2004. Abstract pub-
lished on the Internet April 28, 2005.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Okayama
University of Science, Okayama 700-0005, Japan (e-mail: kasa@ee.ous.ac.jp).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2005.851602
0278-0046/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
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1145
One of the improved main circuit configurations is named the
“flyback inverter with center-tapped secondary winding” [13].
In this paper, the “flyback inverter with center-tapped sec-
ondary winding” is used to improve the operating performance
of the newly proposed “sensorless current flyback inverter.”
The “flyback inverter with center-tapped secondary winding” is
already presented in the literature [12]–[14]; however, since the
method still does not have widespread familiarity, the features
are summarized here as follows. No dc–dc converter is required,
as the flyback inverter can directly convert the specified dc
power to ac power, where the dc voltage is not related to the
operation. The main circuit configuration becomes very simple
and the number of power semiconductor switches used is less
than that of a conventional one; these features contribute to
the cost reduction of the total system. As the electric potential
of the PV array can be fixed at the ground potential, there is
no possibility of any static capacity between the PV array and
the ground to generate any troublesome discharge current. On
the other hand, this discharge current becomes an inevitable
one when the conventional bridge inverter circuit configuration
is applied. The control algorithm is very simple and of open
loop and is found to be equipped enough to run the PV power
conditioner.
The detailed design method of the flyback inverter is dis-
cussed in Section II of this paper. For the MPPT operation, the
PV voltage and the PV current are required to calculate the PV
output power. Using a digital signal processor (DSP), the PV
current is calculated from the voltage across the capacitor con-
nected to the PV array. Section III treats in detail the algorithm
for the calculation including the flowchart. The experimental re-
sults show that the sensorless current system has a performance
similar to that of a system with the current sensors. The details
are provided in Section IV.
II. FLYBACK INVERTER WITH CENTER-TAPPED
SECONDARY WINDING
A. Operation of Flyback Inverter With Center-Tapped
Secondary Winding
Fig. 1 shows the main circuit configuration of a prototyped
PV power conditioner. The flyback inverter consists of three in-
sulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), two diodes, and a fly-
back transformer with center-tapped secondary winding. The
flyback transformer has the functions to not only generate the
ac power but also to isolate between the PV array and the ac
utility grid line to protect against any electric accident. The pri-
mary winding is connected to the PV array and IGBT1, where
the DSP-driven IGBT1 has width-modulated gate pulses. Two
 1146 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 52, NO. 4, AUGUST 2005

Fig. 2. Switching sequences.

Fig. 3. Circuit configuration applying transformer model.

same manner in the negative half cycles as it is controlled in the

Fig. 1. Circuit configuration and operation modes of flyback inverter with positive half cycles.
center-tapped secondary winding.
B. Design of Inductance
sets of ac semiconductor switches, one composed of IGBT2 The strong effect of the winding inductances of the flyback
and Diode in series and another, IGBT3 and Diode in transformer on the performance of the inverter calls for a very
series, are, respectively, connected to each terminal of the sec- careful design. In the following analysis, it is assumed that the
ondary winding of the flyback transformer. They can switch re- transformer is an ideal one and has the equivalent magnetizing
ciprocally and synchronously with the polarity of the ac utility inductance of in the primary side as shown in Fig. 3. As
grid line. The switching sequences and waveforms are shown the turns ratio between the primary and secondary winding of
in Fig. 2. Fig. 1 shows the operating modes of the flyback in- the flyback transformer is only two, the mutual inductances be-
verter with center-tapped secondary winding. Mode I is defined tween primary and secondary and also between primary
for the situation where IGBT1 is at on-state with all other IGBTs and secondary become . Fig. 4(a) shows how the cur-
in off and the stored energy in is discharged to the ac utility rent in the magnetizing inductance of flows in the discon-
grid line with the polarity of synchronized with that of the tinuous current mode (DCM). “ ” is defined as the crest value
ac utility grid line. Mode II is defined for the duration where of the enveloped peak current in when the inverter operates
IGBT2 is at on-state with all the rest in off, implying the stored at the rated full power of and the summation of and
energies in and being released to the ac utility grid line and is just equal to the duration at the crest point
giving the positive polarity. Modes I and II are switched alter- of the current. Here, is the ac utility grid line frequency and
nately at high switching frequency during the positive half cycle. is the total number of the switching periods during the half
The envelope of the peak current through the primary winding cycle . Using these symbols as defined above, the
of the flyback transformer is modulated by the pulsewidth mod- and of IGBT1 can be expressed as
ulated (PWM) gate pulse of IGBT1 to a sinusoidal form and
is in phase with the ac utility grid line voltage. Mode III is for
(1)
the negative half-cycle polarity. Mode I and III are switched al-
ternately at high switching frequency during the negative half
(2)
cycle. The current flowing through IGBT1 is controlled in the

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KASA et al.: FLYBACK INVERTER CONTROLLED BY SENSORLESS CURRENT MPPT FOR PV POWER SYSTEM 1147

C. Calculation of Switch-On Period

As shown in Fig. 4(b), the enveloped peak current in the mag-
netizing inductance during the arbitrary th switching pe-
riod is expressed as

(6)

where is the time from the starting point of the th switching

period in seconds.
Equation (6) can be written using the sine angle addition for-
mula. Therefore, as is a small value, is approx-
imated as

(7)

As the flyback inverter is operated in DCM, the IGBT

switch current is started from zero initial current at every
switching as shown in Fig. 4(b); the switch current during the
th switching period is expressed as

(8)

where is the threshold voltage of IGBT1, and is the

on-resistance of IGBT1.
As is a small value, can be approximated as

(9)

Fig. 4. Inductor current mode in DCM. (a) Waveforms of inductor current in When the intersection of and is set to the
L during half cycle of ac utility grid line. (b) Waveforms of switch current, switch-on period, we obtain the pulsewidth of the th
inductor current in L , and capacitor voltage during the k th switching period.
switching pulse by solving from (7) and (9) as

(10)
where is the root-mean-square value of ac utility grid line
voltage and is the capacitor voltage of . Using (1) and (2),
the is expressed as
III. MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING WITHOUT
CURRENT SENSOR
(3)
As the PV array has the nonlinear characteristics on the
power versus voltage chart as shown in Fig. 5, the linear control
On the other hand, the rated maximum output power theory cannot be applied to extract the maximum electric power
is expressed as from the PV array. The perturbation-and-observation method is
often used for the MPPT in many PV systems [15], [16]. In this
method, the periodically controlled increase or decrease of the
PV voltage moves the operating points toward the maximum
(4)
power point. Usually, the maximum point is tracked by varying
the duty ratio of the switching device switched to its on-state.
In the conventional system, it is required to calculate the PV
where is given by . Substituting (4) into (3), the in-
output power, which is given by the product of the PV voltage
ductance is finally given by
and PV current. The PV current is usually detected by using
an expensive dc current sensor and, therefore, demands an
alternative means to achieve cost reduction in measuring the dc
(5)
current. In this paper, it is proposed to calculate the PV current

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 1148 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 52, NO. 4, AUGUST 2005

where and are defined as the total amount of

electric charges stored in the capacitor and flowing through
the switch of IGBT1 during interval , respectively. Fig. 4(b)
shows the capacitor voltage and the switch current waveforms
during the th switching period. When and
are defined as the capacitor voltages at the ends of the th
and the th switching periods, respectively, the relation between
these capacitor voltages and the electric charge is ex-
pressed as

(16)
Fig. 5. PV characteristics.
The averaged capacitor current during the th switching pe-
riod is given by

(17)

where . The average capacitor current

is expressed as

(18)

A it can be assumed that the switch current is composed of the

magnetizing current in the flyback transformer and the capacitor
is so large that the fluctuation of the capacitor voltage during the
Fig. 6. Equivalent circuit of flyback inverter (primary side only). switching period can be neglected, then the switch current can
be expressed as
from the PV voltage as described below by the aid of a digital
(19)
signal processor (DSP) in real time. It is considered that the PV
current consists of the summation of the capacitor current (20)
and the switch current as shown in Fig. 6
The relation between the electric charge and the switch cur-
(11) rent is expressed as
When (11) is integrated in the interval of the switching
period shown in Fig. 4(b), we get (21)

(12) From (15), the averaged switch current during the th

switching period is expressed as

is defined as the averaged current of in the (22)

interval , and the total amount of the electric charge which
flows out from the PV array during the th switching period is The average switch current is obtained as
defined as and expressed as

(13)
(23)
Finally, the average PV current can be estimated as
In the same way

(14)

(24)
(15)

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KASA et al.: FLYBACK INVERTER CONTROLLED BY SENSORLESS CURRENT MPPT FOR PV POWER SYSTEM 1149

Fig. 7. Flowchart of interrupt routine for t (k ) including I calculation and MPPT.

Fig. 7 shows an outline of the flowchart of the interrupt rou- Then, the PV power is given as the product of
tine for including the PV current estimation and MPPT. and . is compared to the last PV power
The main program is not shown in Fig. 7. The examples of the and the sign of is given by the process as shown in Fig. 7.
parameters and their values listed below can be set in the main Then, the new duty ratio is decided by the summation of
program as their respective initial conditions: , the last duty ratio and the newly decided differentiation
, , , , and as expressed by
, . Moreover, all pulsewidth data for
the rated full-load condition are stored in the ROM table of the (26)
main program in the entries from to . where (27)
The “ ” is reset to zero by the interrupt routine program which
is started by the external interrupt signal at every zero-crossing Each is given by the product of and
electrical angle of the ac utility grid line voltage in order to as
synchronize the generated inverter voltage with the ac utility
(28)
grid line voltage. This interrupt routine is repeated continuously
at the repetition rate of 9.6 kHz after which “ ” is reset to The data of is derived from the parallel I/O port of the
zero again. When “ ” is less than “ ,” is calculated by DSP board. As mentioned in Section I, it will be found that the
(24). When “ ” coincides with “ ,” is renamed to . control algorithm is open loop and a very simple one.
The repetitive frequency controller is used for smoothing of
the output power. We make the repetitive frequency controller IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
switch to the MPPT routine every six times of the interrupt
routine, and so the repetitive frequency is Hz in Fig. 8 shows the experimental system configuration. Three
our experimental system. The MPPT routine or the process of PV modules with the electrical output rating of 109 W per
so-called “perturbation-and-observation method” is started and module are used in our system. The DSP, type TMS320C31,
is calculated as is used to control the PV power conditioner and the MPPT
including the PV current and pulsewidth calculation. The
pulsewidth data are derived from the parallel I/O port
(25) of the DSP board and the data are delivered to the complex
programmable logic device (CPLD) in order to generate the

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 1150 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 52, NO. 4, AUGUST 2005

Fig. 8. System configuration.

TABLE I
CIRCUIT PARAMETERS

PWM pulses. In the experimental system, the PV current is Fig. 9. Output voltage and current and switch current waveforms.
(a) Simulation results. (b) Experimental results.
monitored by the dc current sensor and, thus, detected for the
measurement. IGBT1 is driven by the switching frequency of
9.6 kHz. IGBT2 and IGBT3 are switched alternatively with
some dead times, and these switches are synchronized to the
ac utility grid line frequency of 60 Hz. The flyback inverter is
operated in DCM. The main circuit parameters are listed in
Table I.
Fig. 9 shows the waveforms of the output voltage ,
the output current , and the switch current , when the
flyback inverter generates the output power of 300 W. The
P-SPICE simulation yields the waveforms given in Fig. 9(a).
On the other hand, the experiment mentioned above exhibits
the waveforms given in Fig. 9(b). It is found that these wave-
forms are in good agreement with each other and also that the
prototyped flyback inverter can operate at a power factor of
almost unity.
Fig. 10 shows how the efficiency and input power depend
on the duty ratio , where the input power corresponds to the Fig. 10. Efficiency and input power of flyback inverter with center-tapped
secondary windings.
PV output power. The inductance and maximum pulsewidth of
IGBT1 are designed for the prototyped flyback inverter so as
to generate a maximum power of 300 W. It is found that the upper waveform in Fig. 11(a) is the current of measured
inverter has the efficiency of approximately 89% at the rated by the dc current sensor, while the lower one is the one calcu-
output power, and the transformer and IGBT1 are responsible lated by (24). It is observed that transient phenomena occurs in
for most of the power loss. the switch-on interval caused by the inrush current in capacitor
In order to verify the calculated current from (24), the dc cur- , since capacitor is not pre-charged in the switch-off in-
rent sensor is tentatively connected between the capacitor terval. Comparing these curves reveals the fact that both curves
and PV array shown in Fig. 8. The measured and calculated cur- are similar to each other. However, it is also observed that there
rents are compared with each other as shown in Fig. 11. The are some delays on the lower waveform caused by the sampling

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KASA et al.: FLYBACK INVERTER CONTROLLED BY SENSORLESS CURRENT MPPT FOR PV POWER SYSTEM
Fig. 11. Comparison of estimated PV current and measured one.
(a) Waveforms of PV current. (b) Proportional relations of PV currents.
period of the processor program. The rated PV current is 3 A
and it is scaled in 8 bit, when the current is measured through
the dc current sensor and the A/D converter in our system. Then,
the resolution of the current is 0.012 A. Fig. 11(b) shows the ex-
perimental results which compare the estimated PV current cal-
culated by (24) with the measured PV current. Since an estimate
error of the PV current is within 0.012 A, proportional relations
between the estimated current and the measured one are kept as
shown in this figure.
Fig. 12 shows the experimental results of the MPPT perfor-
mance. At the time of experiment, it is a fine weather day and
the solar intensity is 807 W/m . We can estimate roughly that
the maximum power is 242 W, because the rated power is 300
W when the solar intensity is 1000 W/m as shown in Fig. 5.
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1151
Fig. 12. Comparison of MPPT performance. (a) With current sensor.
(b) Without current sensor.
To obtain the maximum power, the duty ratio must be approxi-
mately 0.9 which is obtained from Fig. 10. The PV generates the
power of 40 W at the initial conditions of , when the
MPPT route in Fig. 7 is not operated. The MPPT operation of
the PV power conditioner is started at time 0. Since the repetitive
frequency of MPPT is 10 Hz and is 0.01, we can estimate
that the time interval until arriving at the maximum power is ap-
proximately 6 s. It is observed from Fig. 12 that the PV power
conditioner can track the maximum power of 242 W after 6.3 s
from the start of MPPT operation. Fig. 12(a) shows the MPPT
performance with the dc current sensor, which means that the
measured is used in the interrupt routine program shown
in Fig. 7. On the other hand, Fig. 12(b) shows the MPPT per-
formance without the dc current sensor, which means that the
calculated by (24) is used in the interrupt routine pro-
gram. Similar performance in the two cases proves the fact that
the proposed current-sensorless method can track the maximum
power point with the same efficiency as the conventional MPPT
method can with the current sensor.
V. CONCLUSION
A sensorless current flyback inverter has been proposed,
which can be applied to a PV system guided by MPPT opera-
tion. To verify the operation of the sensorless current flyback
inverter, a prototype flyback inverter with center-tapped sec-
ondary winding is used. However, the novel sensorless method
can be applied to any type of flyback inverter with fixed
switching frequency and DCM operation. The comparison of
the tests by the flyback inverters with the dc current sensor and
without it prove that there is no operational difference between
them, including the MPPT performance. The novel sensorless
 1152 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 52, NO. 4, AUGUST 2005
method can contribute to the space saving and cost reduction
of the PV power conditioner from both the theoretical and
experimental points of views. The experimental data show that
the sensorless current flyback inverter can be applied to MPPT
for the PV small power system with successful performance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank R. Yamada of Shindengen
Electric Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Japan, for his help in
this study.
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Nobuyuki Kasa (S’96–M’98) was born in Japan in
1969. He received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees
in electronic engineering from Tokyo Metropolitan
Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1993, 1995,
and 1998, respectively.
In 1998, he joined the Department of Electronic
Engineering, Okayama University of Science,
Okayama, Japan, where he is currently an Assistant
Professor. He was a Visiting Research Scholar in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Victoria, Canada, in 2003. His research
interests include ac motor drive systems and photovoltaic power systems.
Dr. Kasa received the Excellent Paper Presentation Award from the Institute
of Electrical Engineers of Japan in 1999.
Takahiko Iida was born in Japan in 1939. He
received the Bachelor of Engineering degree from
Kobe University, Kobe, Japan, in 1961, and the
Doctoral degree from Osaka University, Osaka,
Japan, in 1982.
He was with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
(MELCO), Japan, from 1961 to 1989. In 1989, he
joined Okayama University of Science, Okayama,
Japan, where he is currently a Professor in the
Department of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of
Engineering.
Prof. Iida has been an International Member of IEC/SC47D since 1996. He is
also Chairman of the Domestic Semiconductor Package Technical Committee.
He received the Technical Prize from the Japan Electric Industry in 1975, the
Invention Encouragement Prize from the Japan Invention Association in 1975,
and the Committee Prize Paper Award from the IEEE Industry Applications
Society in 1995.
Liang Chen was born in Xin Jiang, China, in 1968.
He received the B.S degree from XiAn Mining Col-
lege, XiAn, China. He is currently working toward
the Ph.D. degree at Okayama University of Science,
Okayama, Japan.
He is also with the Department of Electrical
Engineering, Xin Jiang University, Xin Jiang, China,
where his research interests include photovoltaic
power systems.