The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference

A Single-Phase Grid-Connected Inverter

with Power Decoupling Function
T. Shimizu, S. Suzuki

Tokyo Metropolitan University, 1-1, Minami-Ohsawa, Hachioji, 192-0397, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract-- This paper presents a single-phase grid

connected inverter with a power decoupling circuit. In the
single-phase grid connected inverter, it is well known that a
power pulsation with twice the grid frequency is contained
in the input power. In a conventional inverter, electrolytic
capacitors with large capacitance have been used in order
to smooth the DC voltage. However, lifetime of those
capacitors is shortened by the power pulsation with twice
grid frequency. The authors have been studied a active
power decoupling (APD) method that reduce the pulsating
power on the input DC bus line, this enables to transfer the
ripple energy appeared on the input DC capacitors into the
energy in a small film capacitor on the additional circuit.
Hence, extension of the lifetime of the inverter can be
expected because the small film capacitor substitutes for the
large electrolytic capacitors. Effectiveness of the proposed
method is confirmed through simulation and experimental
results.
Index Terms--utility interactive inverters, single-phase
inverter, power decoupling, lifetime of inverter.

I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, interest in natural energy among
power electronics authorities has grown in response to
increased concern for the environment. Many kinds of
inverter circuits and their control schemes for
photovoltaic (PV) power generation systems have been
studied [1]-[9]. Especially on the use of residential PV
power generation system, small power single-phase
utility interactive inverters have usually been used. In
this case, electrolytic capacitors with large capacitance
have been connected on the DC input bus in order to
decouple the power pulsation caused by single-phase
power generation. However, especially during the
summer season, the inverters have to operate under a
very high atmospheric temperature, and hence the
lifetime of the inverter is shortened, because the
electrolytic capacitor has a drastically shortened the life
time when used in a high-temperature environment. Of
course, we may be able to use film capacitors instead of
the electrolytic capacitors if we can pay for the extreme
large volume of the inverter. However, this is not a
978-1-4244-5393-1/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

realistic solution when we are taking the volume and the

cost into consideration.
Recently, active power decoupling (APD) concept on
a single-phase utility interactive inverter/converter which
can reduce the power pulsation on the input DC caps
began to attract attention[9]-[12]. The authors also have
been studied a flyback-type utility interactive inverter
circuit that enables the active power decoupling by using
only a small DC capacitors [13],[14]. This method is
successful in the APD capability and reduction of
volume and weight of the inverter setup.
However those methods have the problem of lower
conversion efficiency compared to conventional one. In
order to overcome this problem, this paper presents a
novel high-efficiency single-phase inverter circuit with
APD function. A most distinctive feature of the proposed
system is that a novel APD circuit is combined with a
forward type power conversion stage. A control method
suitable for the proposed inverter is also proposed. The
effectiveness of the proposed inverter is confirmed
thorough P-SIM simulation and experiments on a 500W
prototype.
II. CIRCUIT CONFIGURATIN
Fig. 1 and Table. 1 show the circuit configuration and
the circuit parameters of the proposed inverter system,
respectively. The inverter system is composed of a
push-pull type forward converter, a single-phase inverter,
and an APD circuit that is circled by dotted line in Fig. 1.
The push-pull type forward converter supplies the high
frequency current, its amplitude as modulated to a
sinusoidal waveform, into the secondary side of the

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SX2

Lf
SAC1

Power decoupling
circuit

SAC2

SM2

LS

iAC

iDC
Cf

SX0
CX
vDC

CDC

DX
LX

SX1

SAC3

SAC4

SM1

Fig. 1. Circuit configuration of the proposed system.

vAC

The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference

Utility Grid

PV module

Table. 1 Circuit parameters.

INV
Large electrolytic capacitor
Fig. 2. Power flow of large electrolytic capacitor method.

transformer. The secondary current on the transformer is

rectified by the diode rectifier, and the switching
frequency component in it is removed by the LC filter.
Finally, the single-phase inverter is switching at the grid
frequency to output a sinusoidal wave. Then the system
can inject a sinusoidal AC current with grid frequency
into the utility line. In addition, in order to decouple the
pulsation power, the APD circuit, which is composed of
a boost chopper and additional switches SX1 and SX2 , is
integrated with the push-pull type forward converter.

Fig. 3. Power flow of active power decoupling method.

III. OPERATION PRINCIPLE

A. Active power decoupling operation
Instantaneous output power, Pout , on a single-phase
grid connected inverter is expressed as,
(1)
pout = VAC IAC VAC IAC cos2t
where, VAC is the grid voltage, IAC is the output current,
is angular frequency of the utility grid.
The power pulsation with twice the grid frequency is
appeared on a DC bus line, and that results in both the
difficulty of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT)
control of PV power generation system and the distortion
of the output current. So it is needed to decouple the
pulsating power from the input DC bus line. In usual
case, large electrolytic capacitors have been connected
into the DC bus line in order to absorb the voltage
pulsation, as shown in Fig. 2. However, it is not
preferable to use the electrolytic capacitor in the volume
and the lifetime point of view.
Fig. 3 shows the APD method. Since the APD circuit
is independent of the inverter portion, there is no
limitation of power decoupling capacitor voltage except
the lowest voltage. Here, the instantaneous power PC
stored in the power decoupling capacitor is expressed as,
dx
(2)
dt
where, CX and X are capacitance and instantaneous
voltage on the power decoupling capacitor, respectively.
Capacitance of the power decoupling capacitor can be
reduced as the voltage X or the voltage variation
PC = C X

dvX
dt on the power decoupling capacitor increase.

Fig. 4. Instantaneous power and operation modes

Since the APD circuit reduces the power pulsation on the

DC input bus, the inverter needs only a small film
capacitor but a large electrolytic capacitor for both the
power decoupling capacitor and DC input capacitor.
Fig. 4 shows the relationship of instantaneous input
and output power, Pin and Pout , and the corresponding
operation modes on the system. Since the input power,
Pin , should be kept constant whereas the output power,
Pout , fluctuates, the surplus or lack of power among those
should be stored in the power decoupling capacitor. Then,
there are two operation modes those are decided by the
difference of instantaneous power between an input and
a output stage.
1) mode I: Fig. 5(a) shows the power flow at mode I.
In this mode, Pin , is surplus to Pout , as shown in Fig. 4.
Since the output power Pout is directly transferred from
the input power Pin to the secondary side of the
push-pull converter, the remained power, Pin Pout , is
stored in the power decoupling capacitor thorough the
buck chopper circuit. The areas denoted by () and ()
shown in Fig. 4 corresponds to the output power and the
surplus power, respectively.
2) mode II: Fig. 5(b) shows the power flow at mode II.

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The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference

Fig. 5. Modulation signal and the gate pulses for the switches.

(a) Mode I

Fig. 7. Switching stage during the power flow mode I.

(b) Mode II
Fig. 5. Power flow in each operation mode.

Since the input power, Pin , is smaller than the output

power, Pout , then the lacking power, Pout Pin , should
be supplied from the energy stored in the power
decoupling capacitor. In this case, the input power Pin is
transferred to the secondary side of the push-pull
converter and the lacking power is supplied from the
energy in the power decoupling capacitor that is stored
during the previous mode. The area()and ()shown in
Fig. 4 correspond to the DC input power and the supplied
power from the decoupling capacitor, respectively.
B. Switching Operation
Fig. 6 shows the operation waveforms on the primary
side of the transformer. A carrier signal, a sinusoidal
modulation signal, and an input current command are
shown at the upper trace in Fig.6. By comparing those
signals, the gate signals for each switch are generated as
shown in the lower part of Fig. 6.
Operation in each switching stage is shown as follows.
Operation at mode I:
Fig. 7 shows the power flow of primary side in mode I.

1) stageI-1 [t I0 < < t I1 ]: SM1 is turned on and the

input power () is transferred to the secondary side of
the transformer. At the same time, the decoupling switch
SX0 is turned on in order to store the surplus power ()
to the power decoupling capacitor.
2) stageI-2 [t I1 < < t I2 ]: SM1 is turned off but SX0
remains on state until the required surplus power is
stored into the power decoupling capacitor.
3) stageI-3 [t I2 < < t I3 ]: All switches are turned off.
Based on the push-pull converter operation, SM1 and
SM2 are triggered in the same manner with the previous
stages.
Operation at mode II:
Fig.8 shows the power flow of primary side in mode
II.
1) stageII-1 [t II0 < < t II1 ] : SM1 is turned on to
supply the all input power.
2) stageII-2 [t II1 < < t II2 ]: SM1 is turned off and
additional SX1 is turned on to supply the lacking power
().
3) stageII-3 [t II2 < < t II3 ]: All switches are turned
off.
SM2 and SX2 are triggered in the same manner with
the previous stages.
Here, the authors have already proposed a flyback-type
inverter system with power decoupling function[13]. But
in this case, the current flowing thorough the windings of

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2
+
VX VDC

VAC IAC
CX

(3)

Eq. (3) gives the relationship between averaged

voltage, VX , and capacitance, CX , as shown in Fig. 9.
From fig. 9, it is found that DC bus capacitance of the
proposed method can be reduced to approximately 1/100
compared with that on the conventional PV inverters.
Also, the higher the voltage, VX , is selected, the smaller
the capacitance, Cx , can be used. However, that needs
the high voltage rating of the MOSFET switches in the
primary side of the transformer and hence it is necessary
to design the system taking those voltage ratings into
consideration.

Fig. 8. Switching stage during the power flow mode II.

IV. SIMULATION and EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Fig. 9. Operational region of the capacitor voltage.

the flyback transformer have high peak amplitude and

small pulse width as well. That causes large conduction
losses and switching losses on both the semiconductor
devices and the windings of the transfornmer. On the
other hand, since the proposed inverter system supplies
the output current efficiently, the current flowing
thorough the transformer windings has smaller peak
current and wider pulse width compared with those in a
flyback-type inverter. Furthermore, the energy stored in
the decoupling capacitor is transferred directly to the
primary winding of the transformer in Mode II, energy
loss on the chopper inductor can be reduced. Hence, it is
expected that reduction of the conversion efficiency can
be minimized compared with that on the conventional
power decoupling methods [13].

Figs. 10 and 11 show the simulation results on both

inactive condition and active condition of the power
decoupling circuit, respectively. When the PAD circuit is
inactive condition, large pulsating component is
contained in both the DC bus voltage, DC , and DC
input current, DC . However, when the APD is activated,
previous pulsating components do not appear in DC
and DC . Instead of that, large voltage pulsation with
twice the utility frequency is appeared on the power
decoupling capacitor voltage X . This means that the
pulsating power caused by ac output power is
compensated by the operation of the decoupling circuit.
Fig. 12 shows the experimental results on a resistive
load, where the input voltage DC =150V. The
experimental results confirms that no pulsating voltage
and current are not contained in DC and DC , and
pulsating voltage is appeared in the decoupling capacitor

C. A Required capacitance for the decoupling

capacitor.
Required capacitance for adequate operation of the
APD circuit can be calculated as follows. In order to
maintain the pulsation power, the pulsated power
expressed in the second term in (1) should be equal to the
value PC shown in (2).
Since the capacitor voltage, X , on the power
decoupling capacitor must be larger than the input DC
voltage, DC ,_because the power decoupling circuit is
the boost chopper. Hence the averaged voltage, VX , on
the decoupling capacitor during one cycle of the grid
frequency should satisfy (3),

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Fig. 10. Simulation results (without power decoupling).

The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference

V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has presented a novel high efficiency single
phase inverter with a power decoupling function. The
proposed inverter system provides the low ripple voltage
at the dc input portion, and it enables to use small and
long life capacitors such as film capacitors instead of
the electrolytic capacitors. Furthermore, the conversion
efficiency of the system is higher than that of the
conventional flyback-type inverter. This is suitable for
use in the Photovoltaic Power Generation system.
Simulation and experimental results confirm that the
effectiveness of this system.

Fig. 11. Simulation results (with power decoupling).

REFERENCES

Fig. 12. Experimental results (with power decoupling).

voltage, X .
Fig. 13 shows the measured conversion efficiency of
the proposed system on both inactive condition and
active condition of the APD circuit, respectively. In
comparison, the conversion efficiency of the
flyback-type inverter on the same condition is shown.
The conversion efficiency of the proposed method
decreases only 1 percent when the APD circuit is
activated. The decreasing rate of the conversion
efficiency can be very small compared with that of the
flyback-type inverter presented in [13]. In addition, the
conversion efficiency of the proposed inverter will be
able to increase much more, because the conversion
efficiency without APD circuit has much higher
efficiency potentially.

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