2010 2nd IEEE International Symposium on Power Electronics for Distributed Generation Systems
1
Development of High Gain and Efficiency
Photovoltaic System Using Multilevel Boost
Converter Topology
Mahrous E. Ahmed, IEEE Member, Mostafa Mousa, IEEE student member, and
Mohamed Orabi, IEEE Senior Member
APEARC, South Valley University, Aswan City, Egypt
orabi@ieee.org
Abstract--: This paper presents the analysis and operation
of a PV system using multilevel dc-dc topology as a high
gain converter in addition to applying Maximum Power
Point Tracking (MPPT) technique. The multi-level boost
converter parameters have been adjusted to achieve the
high efficiency and high gain target results. In addition, a
full bridge inverter is used to connect the generated power
from the PV into the grid. The total system has been
analyzed and then simulated using MATLAB to prove the
idea. Then, a set-up of experimental results has been
provided to validate the simulation results using FPGA
control.
Index Terms-- Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT),
photovoltaic (PV), multilevel boost converter (MLBC).
I. INTRODUCTION
In a world where environmental protection and energy
conservation are growing concerns, the development of
PV technologies have taken on an accelerated pace to
fulfill these needs [1] - [2]. PV can be found in many
applications such as power stations, building, transport,
standalone devices, rural electrification, and solar
roadway.
Photovoltaic (PV) system has been recently become an
essential target overall the world. However, most of
current PV systems are based on string structure where
several modules are connected in series to increase the
input voltage that can be boosted for grid connection
applications. Unfortunately this configuration of
module connection is very sensitive for environmental
conditions such as shading phenomena. In case of
any partial shaded strikes any part of any module, the
system removes the whole chain from operation
however some modules can run if they are
independently works, so the system generates a lower
power. Therefore, it becomes preferable to attach a
dc-dc converter into each module using a high
voltage gain converter topology to increase the system
efficiency under any environmental issues. There are few
techniques have been developed recently for high gain
dc-dc converter [3] [5]. The main differences are the
applicable used duty cycle. One of these topologies is the
multi-level converter developed in [3].
1
This work was supported by Egyptian Fund STDF projects No.
346.
978-1-4244-5670-3/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
This paper introduces the multilevel boost converter
(MLBC) as a high gin dc-dc converter employing MPPT
technique to feed the conventional inverter for grid
applications. The developed system has the advantage of
high efficiency through applying MPPT and designing
the MLBC parameters. The paper is organized in the
following way. Section II presents modeling of the cell of
the PV. Section III presents the multilevel dc-dc
converter topology used, its switching signals, and the
MPPT control method. Section IV will present the
power inverter topology capable of synthesizing
multilevel PWM waveforms across the load, switching
technique suitable for this multilevel topology, and the
control signals for the inverter switches. Serving as a
reference for inverter validity, section V gives
MATLAB simulated results which are used for
verifying the performance of the design procedure of
the PV system whose analysis is presented in
Section II, III, and III. Section VI presents the
hardware implementation. Last, Section VI summarizes
the conclusion presented in the paper.
II. ACCURATE PV CELL MODEL
The simplest equivalent circuit of a solar cell is a
current source in parallel with a diode. The output of
the current source is directly proportional to the light
falling on the cell. The diode determines the I-V
characteristics of the cell. Increasing accuracy can be
introduced to the model by adding in turn:
Temperature dependence of the diode saturation current
Io .
Temperature dependence of the photo current IL.
Series resistance Rs, which gives a more accurate shape
between the maximum power point and the open circuit
voltage.
Shunt resistance Rp in parallel with the diode.
Either allowing the diode quality factor n to become a
variable parameter (instead of being fixed at either 1 or 2)
or introducing two parallel diodes (one with A =1, and
another one with A =2) with independently set saturation
currents [6]. For this research work, a model of moderate
complexity was used. The model includes temperature
dependence of the photo-current IL and the saturation
current of the diode Io. A series resistance Rs was
included, but not a shunt resistance. A single shunt diode
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was used with the diode quality factor set to achieve the been adopted and implemented for extracting the
best curve match. The circuit diagram
am for the solar cell is maximum power from the PV cell.
shown in Fig. 1. To simulate the solar cell using
MATLAB/SIMULINK, equations of the above model
that represent solar cell and describe its I-V I 6
Sun=700W/m2
characteristics are as follows: 5 Sun=800W/m2
Sun=900W/m2
Sun=1000W/m2
4




Power [W]


 
 e   1 (1) 3

 
 1  K T  T (2) 1

0
  0 5 10 15 20
    (3) Voltage [V]
  !
 '
Fig. 2: The MATLAB model
 6 curves for various insulations.
insulations
$

" 
 %& e ' (4)
'

90
Where the cell parameters are Rs = series resistance of the 80
sun=700W/m2
sun=800W/m2
module, Io = the diode saturation current
current, T = cell 70 sun=900W/m2
sun=1000W/m2
temperature (K), Isc = cell short circuit current (A)
(A), IL = 60

Power [W]
50
cell photo-current (A), I = cell current (A) (A), V= cell 40
voltage (V), (  1.6 10,- (Coulomb),, and 3  1.38 30

10,./ (J/K). 20

10

0
0 5 10 15 20
Voltage [V]

Fig. 3: The MATLAB model 7  6 curves for various insulations.

insulations

III. MULTILEVEL BOOST CONVERTER AND MPPT

CONTROL ALGORITHM
As explained in the previous session how it is important
to use a high voltage gain converter, in this paper a
Fig. 1: The circuit model diagram of the solar cell.
multilevel converter is applied to achieve that target.
Figure 4 illustrates a multilevel boostost converter which
combines the boost converter and the switched capacitor
function to provide an output of several capacitors in
TABLE I series with the same voltage and self balanced voltage,
SOLAR CELL SPECIFICATION
The major advantages of this topology are: (i) continuous
Specification input current, (ii) a large conversion rati
ratio with low duty
PV module type SP85P cycle and without a transformer, the used converter has
Rated Power (Pmax) 85W three times gain of the regular boost converter. It can be
built in a modular way and more levels can be added
Voltage at Pmax (Vmp) 17.4V without changing the main circuit; it provides several
Current at Pmax (Imp) 4.9A self balanced
lanced voltage levels and only o one switch is
necessary [3].
Short circuit current (Isc) 5.48A When the switch of the multilevel boost converter
Open circuit voltage (Voc) 22V switched on the inductor is connected to the solar cell. If
C2s voltage is smaller than C1s voltage then C1 charging
C2 through diode D1 and the switch. Simultaneously
Simultaneously, if
the voltage across C2+C4 is smaller than the voltage
Table I gives the specifications of the real solar cell across C1+C3, then C1 and C3 charging C2 and C4 through
that will be used in practical experiment. It has been diodes D1 and D3. Besides that, when the switch turns off,
modeled using MATLAB/SIMULINK by the help of the the diode D1 turn on because the inductor charges the
above equations (1) (4). The output of the MATLAB capacitor C1 until the voltagee on the capacitor C1 equal to
model I  V and P  V curves for the cell are shown in the summation voltage on the solar cell and the inductor
Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, respectively. To make the solar cell to voltage. After that, the diode D3 turn on so the solar cell,
work at it maximum power point under a given the inductor and capacitor C2 charging the capacitor
temperature and irradiance, MLBC should be controlled C1+C3 through it. Besides that, when the voltage on the
under maximum m power point tracking control. The C1+C3 is equal to the summation voltage on the solar cell,
perturb and observe (P&O) control algorithm [7 [7] - [9] has the voltage on the inductor and the voltage on the

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capacitor C2, the diode D3 turns off and the diode D5
turns on so the solar cell, inductor and capacitors C2 and
C4 will charging capacitors C5, C3, C1 until the voltage on
it equal to the summation of the voltage on the solar cell,
inductor and capacitors C2+C4.
To make the solar cell to work in maximum power
point under a given temperature and irradiance it should
controlled under maximum power point tracking control.
MPPT controls have been proposed and implemented for
extracting the maximum power from the PV cell. One of
these algorithms is called perturb and observe (P&O)
algorithm which has been employed in this work. The
maximum power point tracking is executing by
employing perturb and observe technique [7] [8].

TABLE II
DESIGN SPECIFICATION OF THE MLBC
Specification
Input Voltage (Vs) 20-30V
Output Voltage (Vo) 250-320V (DC)
Switching Frequency (f) 10KHz
Duty Cycle (D) 0.4< D< 0.8
Inductance L1 10 mH
Fig. 4: Multi-level boost converter Capacitor (all capacitor used are equal) 220 F
Switch type MOSFET-16N60
Fast recovery Diode FR605
The transfer function of the conventional boost converter
is

689:  ; (5) The simplest control in a perturb and observe is used in
,<
this paper. The control of the perturb and observe was
But in the multilevel converter the transfer function of it designed according to equation (11).
is
=; D (t)= D(t-1)-sign(V)*sign(p)*perturb (11)
689:  (6)
,<

Where D (t) is the present value of the duty cycle, D (t-1)

It is shown from last two equations (5) and (6) that the
MLBC has a big conversion ratio without extreme duty
cycle depending on the level of it.
The inductor sizes are decided such that the change in
inductor currents is no more than 5% of the average
inductor current. The following equation (7), (8) and (9)
gives the value of the inductor which is selected in
MLBC
=? increasing this frequency is transient response of the

>  ,<A@
BCD
ABCD ,<?
EFGH  IJK
.= ?
E  10EFGH
Table II gives the design specification of the MLBC used.
Where: Vc is the capacitor voltage, D is the duty cycle,
Rout is the output load, Ts is the switching period and N is
the number of stage of the multilevel converter. The
design criterion for capacitors is that the ripple
voltage across them should be less than 5%.
The following equation gives the value of the capacitor
which is selected in MLBC
<
L 6 (10)
@ NO ABCD PQR
is the previous value of the duty cycle, sign (V) is the
sign of the difference between the present value of the
solar voltage and the previous value of it and the sign
(p) is the sign of the difference between the present
value of the output power of the solar cell and the
previous value of it.
To make the system fast the perturbation frequency
should be high as enough. But the main drawback for
(7)
multilevel converter. So the value of the perturbation
(8) frequency should be considered. The advantage of the
large step size making the system fast to reach to the
(9)
point of the maximum power, but the main disadvantage
for this large value is the large oscillations around the
maximum power point. A perturbation frequency at
fp.sw=1000 Hz gives the multilevel converter a time to
settle of Tset=1/1000 Hz = 1 ms which corresponds to
N(number of the cycles) = 100 kHz /1000 Hz = 100 duty
cycles. Choosing the perturbation step size of the
Vstep=0.5 makes the system able to reach the maximum
S.T
power point at Vmpp= 17.4 V at 1 ms  0.0348 s
.U
this can consider a good response for the slow irradiation
change.

900
 The response of the control to reach the maximum power
when the insulation changed is very fast it is smaller than
0.03s as we mentioned before.

IV. THE COMPLETE SYSTEM CONTROL

As previous explanation the output of the solar cell is
boosted by using multilevel converter and in the same
time extracting the maximum power from it by maximum
power point tracking control. All of it is in the DC side
but the second stage is converting this DC boosting
voltage to AC sinusoidal voltage to connect this system
to the grid so the control that is designed is working to
inject sinusoidal current to the grid and in the same time
make this current in phase with the grid voltage. The
inverter that is used in this topology is full bridge inverter
and the method of pulse width modulation is hybrid pulse
width modulation (HPWM). HPWM required only two of
the four switches in a full bridge inverter to be pulse
width modulation at high frequency, thus effectively
reducing the switching loss by a factor of two. For
triangular carriers, the HPWM frequency spectrum is
Fig. 5: Flowchart of the P&O algorithm identical to the conventional unipolar PWM (UPWM)
spectrum. In general, any two of the four switches in the
90 inverter can be operated at the output frequency fo, and
80 the other pulse width modulation at high frequency.
70 Figure 7 show the feedback controller used in this
60
application utilizes the MPPT algorithm and PI
50
algorithm. Solar cell current and voltage are sensed to
P ow er [W ]

40

30
extracting maximum power from the solar cell, then take
20
the value of the maximum power and divide it with grid
10 voltage to have a reference current and to ensure that the
0 current injected to the grid is in phase with grid voltage.
-10
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
The reference current is compared with the current
Voltage [V]
injected to the grid to have the error, and then the
Fig. 6: The output power when there is a change in the insulation from
1000W/m2 to 800W/m2
instantaneous current error is fed to a PI controller. PI
control tries to reduce this error by increasing or
Figure 6 shows the output power of the solar cell when decreasing the modulation index. The result is compared
the insulation is changed from 1000 W/m2 to 800 W/m2. with a triangular carrier signal to have a PWM signals for
At 1000 W/m2 the output power is equal to 85 W and the the inverter switches. Figure 8 show the grid voltage and
when the insulation is equal to 800 W/m2 the output the injected current to the grid. The grid voltage and the
power is equal to 73 W this is the maximum power of the injected current are in phase and the power factor of the
solar cell. system is equal to one.

Fig. 7: H-bridge inverter with control algorithm

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Fig. 8: The grid voltage and the injected current under a step change at
0.043 Sec, [100V/dev], [2A/dev].
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
To validate the proposed control, a primary experimental
prototype of the MLBC and full bridge inverter has been
built and experimentally tested. The experimental work
was conducted using an open-loop controller. A FPGA
was used to generate switching pulses. In the multilevel
boost converter all capacitors are 220F- 400V aluminum
electrolytic and inductor has a value of 10mH and the
MOSFETs that are used is IRF16N60.
Fig. 9: Top level schematic diagram of PWM generator in Xilinx FPGA
Fig. 10: The duty cycle, output voltage, output current, and output
maximum power.
Figure 12 shows the voltage and current output of the
inverter but the problem that face us there is small AC
capacitor in our lab so the output voltage is not pure
sinusoidal. In the future work we will try to solve this
problem by designing better control than this.
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Besides this, all switches on the inverter are IRFP32N50
and the inductor that is used as a filter is 10mH and an
AC capacitor is 1 F. IC that are used in the gate drives
are hexa inverter SN74HC04N, Optocoupler CNY75A,
transformer with ratio 7:25 and four fast recovery diodes
for one gate drive. The program that is used in the FPGA
is shown in Fig. 9; it is designed by using schematic in
Xilinx program. The output result is shown in Fig. 10 is
the output voltage of the solar cell and the input current to
the multi level boost converter and the duty cycle
generated from the FPGA and the output power of the
solar cell.
The output power is equal to 77.44 W this is the
maximum power in this time at insulation and
temperature condition.
Figure 11 shows the experimental set up. There are two
switches operate at the low switching (in this case the
switching is 50 Hz), and the other operate at high
switching. In this experimental 5 kHz is used to make the
high switching to operate because maximum frequency of
the optocoupler of the gate drive is operate at the 10 kHz.
Fig. 11: Switching patterns of the full bridge PWM inverter.
Figure 13 shows the complete system that is containing
solar cell, MLBC that boosts the output voltage of the
solar cell and in the same time extract maximum power
from it. PV voltage and current signals are received from
sensors by FPGA where analog to digital converters of
ADC0808CCN type are used for the interfacing to
converter the analog signal to digital signal because ACKNOWLEDGMENT
FPGA cannot read analog signal. The authors gratefully thank the ministry of Science, Egyptian
science and technology development funds (STDF project No
346), for supporting this project.

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This paper presents the analysis and the operation of a Electronics Variable Speed Drives, 2000, pp. 124129.
high efficiency system using a high voltage gain
multilevel topology. First, an accurate PV module
taking into consideration the shaded effects has been
developed. From this model, it has been cleared the
advantage of using AC modules which require a high
voltage gain converters. Therefore, multilevel topologies
have been proposed to be used in PV system. MPPT
control has been employed to extract the maximum
power from the cell. A PWM control scheme has been
employed for the inverter to connect the PV system with
the grid at unity power factor. The simulation and
experimental results provided in the paper has validated
the proposed system. Additionally, some experimental
results have been provided to validate the system results.

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