A Novel Topology and Control Strategy for

Maximum Power Point Trackers and Multi-String

Grid-Connected PV Inverters
S. Ali Khajehoddin, Alireza Bakhshai , and Praveen Jain
khajeddin@ieee.org,
alireza.bakhshai@queensu.ca, praveen.jain@queensu.ca
Energy and Power Electronics Applied Research Laboratory (ePEARL)
ECE Department, Queens University, Kingston, Canada

Abstract The number of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV)

systems is increasing noticeably. However, the high initial cost of
such systems impedes their wide spread commercialization. This
paper presents a new multi-string grid-connected converter topol-
ogy and a simplified control strategy with a minimum number of
components that considerably lowers the initial investment and
increases the life time of the system. The proposed system consists
of two stages. The first stage is a new robust maximum power
point (MPP) tracker circuit that can rapidly follow the given
reference signal of the MPP under any irradiation or temperature
condition. This stage also decouples the output power pulsation
from the input power generation to minimize the deviation from
the MPP. The multi-string topology enables the circuit to extract
the maximum available power from each string independently for
partially shaded conditions. The second stage is a current source
inverter using a modified modulation strategy to inject a current
with minimum harmonic components into the grid at unity
power factor. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate
the performance of the converter and to prove the validity of the
proposed control system.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Grid-connected PV systems consist of two major parts:
PV arrays to convert irradiation to electrical energy, and
a converter to feed the energy into the grid. The PV cell
configurations fall into four groups, [1]: centralized, string,
multi-string and AC-module and AC-cell technologies, see Fig.
1(a). All approaches have advantages and disadvantages [1],
[2]; and will compromise various attributes such as harmonic
rejection capability, simplicity, efficiency, flexibility, reliability,
safety, modularity and cost. The centralized topology is the
best for high power applications because the input power
level can be increased and it only utilizes one inverter which
increases the conversion efficiency. However, the technology
suffers from severe limitations. Since there are significant
amount of high voltage DC wiring between PV modules
and the inverter the system design demands expensive DC
switches and special isolations, safety and protection circuits.
Due to a centralized MPPT, partial shading or any mismatch
between the PV modules cause significant drop in the output
power generation. For medium power applications, the most
suitable configuration seems to be the string or multi-string
technologies, [3], where one or more strings of PV cells are
connected to a single inverter, Fig. 1(b). Unlike the centralized
configuration, this type of configuration enables independent
(a) (b)
Fig. 1. (a) PV systems categorized by different PV cell configurations and
inverter types, (b) Multi-string converter configurations.
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) for all strings which
might be installed in different sizes and orientations. This also
increases the overall efficiency under special circumstances
like partial shadowing. Therefore, the topology offers the
flexibility to optimize the number of strings and converters
for the specific application power level to increase the overall
efficiency and to reduce the losses.
Since the PV array characteristic is highly nonlinear, the
maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of PV arrays becomes
rather challenging. The MPPT systems usually consists of two
parts; an MPP tracker hardware, and an algorithm. The MPP
tracker alters the input resistance of the converter seen from
the output terminal of the PV cells that results in a change of
the operating point. MPPT algorithms [4] calculate the best
operating point available based on the current irradiation and
temperature of the PV cells and provide the reference point

978-1-4244-1874-9/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE 173

 V
i pv
2 f d C1
Fig. 2. Maximum Power Point Tracker control circuit.
for the MPP tracker hardware.
Another MPP tracker task is to decouple the output power
pulsation from the input power generation. This pulsation is
specifically a troublesome issue in single-phase grid-connected
systems, where the instantaneous output power oscillates at
twice the grid frequency. The oscillation results in a deviation
from the optimum operating point [2], [5]. This problem is
usually resolved by a big electrolytic capacitor in the range
of mF at the PV terminals, which in turn decreases the
lifetime and increases the volume, weight and cost of the
converter. To avoid the electrolytic capacitor, authors in [6], [7]
proposed auxiliary circuits which draw constant current from
the input and generate a high DC voltage at the middle stage
to supply the pulsation required at the output. Authors in [8]
proposed another auxiliary circuit with a transformer and few
passive and active components to avoid oscillation. However,
such solutions are designed for low power applications, and
have complex hardware and control systems, which make the
overall system expensive.
This paper introduces a new hardware configuration and
a novel control strategy which uses a minimum number of
components with optimized values. The proposed topology
both decouples the output power pulsations from the input
power generation and independently extracts maximum avail-
able power from each PV string. This circuit specifically avoid
the usage of large electrolytic capacitors, which is a major
factor in limiting the circuit life time. A unique feature of the
proposed topology is that the MPP tracker is not limited to
low-power applications. Since the PV array has a multi-string
configuration, all the aforementioned benefits of this topology
are inherited. Simulation results show a good robustness and
decoupling performance for medium-power systems (such as
residential applications). The proposed converter configuration
is a multi-string buck-boost current source inverter in which
174
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3. (a) PV module current, voltage and power waveforms during three
switching cycles, (c) MPP tracker typical output waveforms during two grid
cycles.
the output voltage can be greater or smaller than the input PV
modules voltage levels which accepts a wide range of input
voltage variations. Unlike the voltage source topologies, the
proposed converter directly generates and feeds the desired
current into the grid using a modified PWM technique. The
tracking capabilities and system responses for different tem-
perature and irradiation are investigated through simulations
that verify the theoretical concepts.
II. M AXIMUM P OWER P OINT T RACKER C IRCUIT D ESIGN
AND P RINCIPLE OF O PERATION
Fig. 2 illustrates the schematic diagram of the power circuit
of the proposed MPP tracker and its control strategy. Although
the power circuit resembles the topology of a buck converter,
the proposed MPP tracker utilizes the main switch to regulate
the input capacitor voltage. Controlling the input voltage
enables the converter to displace the power pulsation from
input terminal through the control, and not as traditionally
done by bulky input capacitors. It is important to note that this
substantial removal of the input voltage oscillations stabilizes
the input operating point resulting in a high efficiency conver-
sion with much smaller capacitors. With the help of any MPP
tracking algorithm, this topology with its control strategy can
always absorb the maximum power available from the PV cells
independent from the output voltage and current. This power
is delivered to the next stage and as it will be explained later,
the output current and voltage of this stage are controlled and
induced by the next stage.
 Fig. 4. The proposed grid-connected inverter with MPP tracker.
A. Dc and AC Loads
Fig. 3(a) shows a snapshot of the input voltage, current
and power waveforms. It is clear that the MPP is tracked
since during both rise time and fall time of the PV voltage,
output power has a maximum. Fig. 3(b) illustrates the MPP
trackers output power and current when a voltage source
(Vinv = k + A sin t) is connected to the output. It can be
observed that when the output voltage increases the output
current tends to decrease to feed the constant input power
to the output. As a result, the output voltage forms the output
current such that the average output power equals the extracted
power from the PV. This MPP tracker can also be used with
dc load and if a resistive load is connectedto the output, as
long as the induced output voltage V out = Pin Rload , is less
than the input voltage (buck topology), the output power will
be constant for all loads.
B. Control Strategy for Maximum Power Point Tracker Circuit
The input capacitor voltage control can be briefly explained
as follows. The capacitor voltage is maintained between two
ref
upper and lower levels. The upper level, V pv , is obtained
from the MPPT algorithm. The lower level is calculated in
such a way that under worst conditions, i.e. MPP, the switching
frequency and the voltage ripple do not exceed certain values.
When the input capacitor voltage exceeds the upper level, the
main switch turns on, and the capacitor is discharged. The
switch remains on until the capacitor voltage hits the lower
limit. Since the level of the input voltage is proportional to the
power generation, by controlling the input voltage the power
fed to the circuit is controlled.
To limit the switching frequency, the lower limit is not taken
as a constant value. Instead it is a function of the desired
frequency f d and the PV current level. The lower limit can
be found as follows:
ipv
Q = C Vpv = ipv tof f Vpv = (1)
2C1 f d
175
For C1 = 20F, f d = 20KHz, imax pv = 4A , the PV
voltage variation is V pv = 5V . It is clear from (1) that
in obtaining a desired PV voltage variation, there is a trade
off between the switching frequency and the capacitor value.
Utilization factor is a parameter that indicates the loss due
to the deviation form the MPP, [2]. For example, calculations
show that to reach %98 utilization ratio, the voltage ripple
should be less than Vpv = %8.5Vpv MP P
. Therefore, in the
design procedure the optimum voltage of the PV cell at the
MP P
lowest operating temperature is selected for V pv , which is
the largest possible PV output voltage. Based on this value the
Vpv is calculated. If the parameters are chosen in this way,
the proposed control scheme satisfies V pv < %8.5Vpv MP P
for all temperatures. Besides, according to (1), when the
irradiation level decreases (decrease of i pv ), the Vpv also
decreases which will guarantee the aforementioned condition
for all irradiation and temperature levels and thus, the circuit
always operates below the selected desired frequency.
III. M ULTI -S TRING C URRENT S OURCE I NVERTER D ESIGN
AND P RINCIPLE OF O PERATION
Fig. 4 demonstrates the power circuit diagram of the pro-
posed multi-string inverter. The power circuit consists of two
stages and two strings of PV modules. The first stage consists
of parallel MPP trackers connected to PV strings and the
second stage is a grid-connected current source inverter. C f
and Lf form a low pass filter to eliminate the output current
high frequency components. To understand the principle of
operation, first assume that the inverter is fed by a dc current
source and it uses a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) scheme
[9] that modulates a sinusoidal reference waveform to generate
sinusoidal output current. As a result of the PWM strategy the
voltage induced at the input port of the inverter will be the
modulated grid voltage that is full-wave rectified. However,
in Fig. 4 the inverter stage is connected to the MPP tracker
which is not a constant current source. Thus, the input current
of the inverter changes according to the induced voltage as
 Pin 1 Pin2 1 Pin 1
peak + +
V grid ( peak 2
V grid ) 2 LA

Pin 2 Pin2 2 Pin 2

peak + +
V grid ( peak 2
V grid ) 2 LB

i Ldc
iL

Fig. 5. Control system block diagram of the multi-string inverter.

discussed in Section II-A. As a matter of fact, the oscillation from ILA min to ILA max :
induced in the inductor current is inevitable because, the input 
1 1 4 Pin
power generation is kept constant by the MPP tracker circuit LA IL2 A max LA IL2 A min = (Pin po (t))dt =
but the output power oscillates at a twice grid frequency (will 2 2
4

be proved in the next section) and thus, the power oscillation (3)
Pin IL min + ILA max
has to be supplied from an energy storage component like the IL A = , I LA = A (4)
2LAI LA 2
inductors of the MPP tracker circuits. Therefore, the PWM
technique must be modified to generate a pure sinusoidal Since the inductor current is equal to its dc value at t=0, using
waveform based on the oscillatory input current source. To a similar procedure described above the inductor current as a
do this, first the inductor current is formulated. Then, the function of t can be derived as follows:

reference signal to the PWM modulator is modified so that 2 1
it regulates and controls the dc component of the inductor iLA (t) = I LA + Vo Io sin 2t (5)
2LA
current, iL , and prevents the double frequency harmonic
component of i L from appearing in the output ac current. The control concept of the inductor dc component using the
modulation index can be explained as follows. By reducing
the modulation index the output current reduces temporarily.
Consequently, the output power decreases and the difference
A. Inductor DC Current Regulation energy will be stored in the inductor which in turn increases
its dc value. As a result, the output current increases up to
Assume that the converter is lossless (P in = Poavg ) and the point that the average power injected into the grid equals
the output filter energy storage is negligible. Also, at this the input power. To reduce the conduction losses, the inductor
stage assume that there is only one PV string connected to dc current can be simply minimized by the modulation index.
the circuit. Therefore, the only energy storage component is Equations (4) and (5) show that the oscillation of the inductor
LA . As discussed in Section II, the MPP tracker circuit will current depends on the input power, the inductor value, and the
extract constant power from the PV modules. Assuming that inductor dc current. Thus, as the inductor dc current decreases,
the inverter generates a current in phase with the grid voltage, IL increases, which eventually results in a discontinuous
the output power can be derived as follows: mode of operation where the output current becomes distorted.
To avoid this mode of operation, the minimum of the inductor
current should be higher than the maximum output current
io (t) = Io sin(t), vo (t) = Vo sin(t)
because the output converter is a voltage boost or step down
1 current source inverter. Thus, the following inequality has to
po (t) = Vo Io (1 cos(2t))
2 be satisfied: 2Pin
ILdc IL Io = (6)
 2

Vo
1 1
Pin = Poavg = po (t)dt = Vo Io (2) Pin 2
Pin Pin
2 0 2 ILdc + + (7)
Vo Vo2 2L
At t = 4
, we have po (t) = Pin , and if t ( 4

, 4 ),
the input power will be greater than the output power. There- Fig. 6 shows the case when the reference current is too low
fore, for this period of time the inductor L A will be charged and the grid current is distorted. Since the minimum possible

176

inductor current is desired, the equality is used in the controller
loop to generate a reference signal for the inductor dc current,
as shown in Fig. 5. To form the feedback loop, first the dc
inductor value is measured and then the error signal is fed
into a PI controller. The output of the PI controller adjusts the
amplitude of the output current reference signal.
When there is more than one string connected to the circuit,
the output power equals to the sum of the input powers. Thus,
the output current can be decomposed into two components
corresponding to each string (i o (t) = io1 (t) + io2 (t)). How-
ever, the charging and discharging of each inductor solely
depends on the difference between the power generated by
a string and the power injected to the system from that string.
Therefore, (2),(4) and (5) hold true for all string number
j, if io , po , Pin and LA are substituted by i oj , poj , Pinj and
LX . If the inequality (6) is satisfied for each string for any
condition, the sum of the inductors currents will be larger
than the maximum output current. As a result, the control
strategy shown in Fig. 5 regulates the dc inductor current of
all strings. One of the advantages of the proposed multi-string
topology is that the output power oscillation is not supplied
only by one inductor; in fact all strings contribute to the
power oscillation. As a result, with more strings, the current
oscillation on each inductor is reduced and smaller inductors
can be used. Moreover, because of smaller oscillations, (5)
results in smaller dc reference for inductors currents which
in turn reduces the conduction losses.
B. Harmonic Cancelation Method
As shown in (5), the inductor current oscillates around
a dc value at twice the grid frequency. Conventional PWM
techniques assume a constant dc input current and thus, any
harmonic of the input source will be reflected to the modulated
output current. This problem can be avoided by introducing a
compensation factor as shown in Fig. 5. When the oscillatory
inverter input dc current increases, the compensator decreases
the modulation index proportionally, as shown in Fig. 7. As a
result, an increase in the dc current value is compensated by a
reduction in the modulation pulse width and vice versa. This
type of compensation prevents the oscillatory harmonics from
appearing at the output current because the energy transfer to
the output will be equivalent to the case where the inductor
current was a constant dc with no oscillation. Fig. 6 show that
the output current has been fully compensated and contains
no harmonic component at twice the grid frequency.
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
To demonstrate the impact of the irradiance level, input
voltage level and partial shading on the performance of the
system, a simulation is setup according to Table I, and the
results are shown in Fig. 7. The system is initially started with
string #2 partially shaded with %40 of the full irradiation
level and string #1 at the full power. At t=0.2 (Sec) both
strings are partially shaded and %15 of the full irradiation
level is applied and the system response is obtained. At t=0.3
(Sec) the temperature of the cells are increased so that the
177
TABLE I
S IMULATION PARAMETERS
Parameters Values
CP V 1 , CP V 2 20 F
Cf 2F
LA ,LB 2000 H
Lf 1000H
CSI fs 10 KHz
First stage fsmax 20 KHz
Grid voltage 110 V
Grid frequency 60 Hz
PV String MPP 1.1KW
output voltage of the pv cells are decreased from 150V to
80V, which is less than the grid voltage. At t=0.4 (Sec) both
strings are exposed to full irradiance and it can be seen that
after any change, the controller stabilizes the output current
fast enough. However, the maximum input power extraction
is almost instantaneous which is because of the MPP tracker
circuit and its fast dynamic response.
V. C ONCLUSION
This paper introduces a new two stage grid-connected
photovoltaic converter topology and control strategy. It is
shown that the first stage performs both Maximum Power
Point Tracking (MPPT) and decoupling for each string in-
dependently using a minimum number of components with
optimized values. The second stage is a current source inverter
employing a modified modulation technique that injects a
current with low total harmonic distortion into the grid. The
simulation results verify and validates the performance of the
system.
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 Fig. 6. The effect of different sections of the proposed controller on the output grid current.

Fig. 7. Different waveforms of the proposed converter for various irradiation and pv voltage levels.

178