International Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences (IJEAS)

ISSN: 2394-3661, Volume-2, Issue-8, August 2015

Simulation and Performance Analysis of a Novel

Seven-Level Inverter with DC-DC Converter for
Photovoltaic System
Dr.R.Seyezhai, P.Vaishnavi
shunt and series resistance of the cell respectively. The value
Abstract This paper deals with simulation of PV based of Rsh is very large compared with the Rs. This model is
single-phase seven level inverter employing maximum power known as single diode model of a PV cell[2].
point tracking algorithm. Incremental conductance (INC)is
employed in this work because it has high tracking accuracy at
steady state and good adaptability to the rapidly changing
atmosphere. A novel dual carrier PWM is employed for the
proposed inverter. A detailed study of PV based seven level
inverter is carried out in MATLAB/SIMULINK and the
performance parameters such as crest factor, peak to average
ratio, weighted THD, harmonic spread factor and Distortion
factor of the proposed inverter are computed and the results are
verified.

Index Terms Maximum Power Point Tracking,

Incremental Conductance, Photovoltaic systems, Pulse Width
Modulation.

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig.1.PV equivalent circuit
The extensive use of fossil fuels has been resulted in the
global problem of green house emissions. Moreover, as the The output current from the PV cell is calculated by applying
supplies of fossil fuels are depleted in the future, they will KCL
become increasing expensively. Thus, solar energy is
becoming more important since it produces less pollution and
(1)
cost of fossil fuel energy is rising, while the cost of solar
I is the output current, Iph is photon current, ID is diode current.
energy is decreasing [1]. The MPPT is necessary for any solar
The ideal diode equation is
systems need to extract maximum power from PV module. It
forces PV module to operate at close to maximum power
operation point to draw maximum available power.
Compared with other methods Incremental conductance has a
(2)
good tracking performance in case of environmental
Is is saturation current, q is electron charge, k is Boltzman
changing. This paper focuses on a seven level cascaded
constant, T is the actual temperature. substitute Equation(2) in
H-bridge inverter with fewer number of dc sources which
(1)we get Equation (3). The photocurrent mainly depends on
overcomes the disadvantages of the conventional MLI. The
the solar insolation and cells working temperature, which is
proposed inverter has reduced dc sources and power
described as
electronic switches it reduces the switching losses of the
inverter. Moreover, this paper proposes a new hybrid
modulation technique employing dual carrier signal in order
to obtain a reduced THD.

II. MODELING OF PV Isc is the cells short-circuit current, Ki is the cells

short-circuit current temperature coefficient, T is the solar
A.Equivalent circuit: cells actual temperature, and is the solar insolation. The
A PV module consist of a number of solar cells connected in reverse saturation current is
series and parallel to obtain the desired voltage and current
levels. The model of PV cell consist of an ideal current source
in parallel with an ideal diode. The current source Iph
represents the cell photo current. Rsh and Rs are the intrinsic (4)
where Iscr the reverse saturation current, Voc is the open
Dr.R.Seyezhai, Associate Professor, Department of EEE,SSN College of circuit voltage, Ns is the number of cells connected in series,
Engineering,Chennai, Tamilnadu, India. A is the ideality factor. The module saturation current Is
P.Vaishnavi, PG Student, Department of EEE,SSN College of
Engineering,Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.
varies with the cell temperature, which is described by

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 Simulation and Performance Analysis of a Novel Seven-Level Inverter with DC-DC Converter for Photovoltaic
System

(5)
where Is is the saturation current, Eg is the band-gap energy
of the semiconductor used in the cell, T r is the reference
temperature. The current output of the PV module is

(6) Fig. 4.VI characteristics with varying irradiation

Using the above equations simulink modeling is done.

Fig. 5. PV characteristics with varying temperature

Fig. 2.Simulink model of PV

Table 1.Electrical Characteristics data of 100W PV Module

Rated power 100W
Voltage at Maximum power (Vmp) 17.53 V
Current at Maximum power ( Imp) 5.43A
Open circuit voltage ( VOC) 21.16V
Short circuit current ( Iscr) 5.87 A
Fig. 6. VI characteristics with varying temperature
Total number of cells in series (NS) 36
Total number of cells in parallel (NP) 1
III. MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING
I-V and P-V characteristics under varying irradiation with
constant temperature are obtained as shown in Figs 3&4. I-V
The overall block diagram of PV based inverter and MPPT is
and P-V characteristics under varying temperature with
shown in Fig. 7. A typical solar panel converts only 30 to 40
constant irradiation are obtained as shown in Figs 5 & 6.
percent of the incident solar irradiation into electrical energy.
Maximum power point tracking technique is used to improve
the efficiency of the solar panel[3].

Fig. 3. PV characteristics with varying irradiation

Fig. 7.Overall block diagram of PV based MLI with MPPT

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 International Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences (IJEAS)
ISSN: 2394-3661, Volume-2, Issue-8, August 2015

Usually, the INC MPPT algorithm as shown in Fig. 8, uses a

fixed iteration step size, which is calculated by the accuracy
and tracking speed requirement. It produces a more
oscillations. To solve these problems, a modified INC MPPT
with variable step size is proposed in this paper. The duty
cycle is automatically tuned according to the inherent PV
cell characteristics. If the operating point is far from MPP, it
increases the duty cycle which enables a fast tracking ability.
If the operating point is near to the MPP, it decrease the duty
cycle so that the oscillations are well reduced, it improves the
efficiency. Incremental conductance method uses voltage and
current sensors to sense the output voltage and current of the
PV cell. At MPP the slope of the PV curve is equal to zero[4].
Fig. 9. Simulink model of MPPT

IV. PROPOSED SEVEN LEVEL INVERTER

(7)

when equation(9) is satisfied the maximum power point is Fig. 10 shows a seven level inverter together with dc-dc
reached. power converter. The proposed system consist of new seven
level inverter and DC/DC power converter. The DC/DC
power converter consists of DC/DC boost converter and
current fed forward converter. DC/DC power converter is
(8) used to convert the dc voltage into two independent voltage
sources. The new seven-level inverter is composed of
capacitor selection circuit and full bridge converter. The
capacitor selection circuit and full bridge converter converts
(9) two independent three level dc voltage and the full bridge
converter converts the three-level dc voltage into seven level
Equations (8 & 9) are used to direction in which a ac voltage [5].
perturbation must occur to move the operating point toward
the maximum power point and the perturbation is repeated
until maximum power point is reached.

Fig. 10 . Seven level inverter together with DC-DC power converter

DC-DC power converter is composed of boost converter and
current fed forward converter with turns-ratio of 2:1.Fig 2
shows the operation of DC-DC power converter. When switch
SD1 is turned ON, boost converter charges the capacitor C2 of
the new seven level inverter. When switch SD1 is turned OFF
and SD2 is turned ON , the current fed forward converter
charges the C1 of the new seven level inverter.
The voltage across the C2 is
Fig. 8. Flow chart for Incremental Conductance Algorithm (10)
The voltage across the C1 is
The output of the MPPT is taken as Vm and it is converted into (11)
sinusoidal reference waveform by using this equation,Vm -
sint and the triangular signal is compared with sinusoidal All switches are operated in fundamental frequency. The
reference signal and pulses are generated and it is given to the circuit operation is explained as follows. The circuit operation
MLI and the simulink model is shown in Fig. 9. of seven level inverter classified as 8 modes. Positive and
negative half cycles have four modes each.

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 Simulation and Performance Analysis of a Novel Seven-Level Inverter with DC-DC Converter for Photovoltaic
System

Mode 1: In this mode, switches S1 and S4 conducts, switches

SS1 and SS2 are turned off. The capacitor C1 discharges
through the diode D1.so the output voltage of the inverter is
Vdc/3.

Mode 2: In this mode, switches SS2, S1 and S4 conducts, switch

SS1 is turned off. The capacitor C2 discharges through the
diode D2.so the output voltage of the inverter is 2Vdc/3.

Mode 3: In this mode, switches SS1, SS2, S1 and S4 conducts,

both the capacitors C1 and C2 discharges through the diode D1 Fig. 11.Dual carrier modulation of MLI
and D2 so the output voltage of the inverter is Vdc.

Mode 4: In this mode, switches S2 and S4 conducts, other VI. SIMULATION RESULTS
switches are turned off. So the output voltage of the inverter is
zero. Simulation was performed in MATLAB SIMULINK to verify
Mode 5: In this mode, switches S2 and S3 conducts, switches that the proposed inverter topology for PV system which is
SS1 and SS2 are turned off. The capacitor C1 discharges through shown in Fig. 12 and the simulation parameters are shown in
the diode D1, so the output voltage of the inverter is -Vdc/3. Table 2.
Mode 6: In this mode, switches SS2, S2 and S3 conducts, switch Table 2.Simulation parameters
Parameters Specification
SS1 is turned off. The capacitor C2 discharges through the
DC-DC Power Converter
diode D2.so the output voltage of the inverter is -2Vdc/3.
Input voltage(Vdc) 20 V
Mode 7: In this mode, switches SS1, SS2, S2 and S3 conducts, Inductor(L ) 1mH
both the capacitors C1 and C2 discharges through the diode D1 f
D
50Hz
and D2.so the output voltage of the inverter is -Vdc. S
Seven Level Inverter
Mode 8: In this mode, switches S2 and S4 conducts, other Capacitor C1,C2 500mF
switches are turned off. So the output voltage of the inverter is Resistor r1,r2 0.01
zero[5]. Load(R) 50

V. PWM TECHNIQUE

In MLI, seven-level output voltage is obtained by different

combination of conduction state of six switches. The gating
pulse for these switches are given by using hybrid modulation
which is the combination of fundamental frequency
modulation (FPWM) and sinusoidal PWM. In the sinusoidal
PWM, Dual Carrier Modulation of MLI is employed.The
output is obtained with reduction in switching loss from
FPWM and good harmonic reduction from SPWM.
A) Dual Carrier Modulation for MLI
The triangular signal is compared with sinusoidal reference
signal and pulses are generated whenever the amplitude of the
reference signal is higher than the carrier signal. Switches
SD1,SD2 will be switched at fundamental frequency and
switches SS1,SS2,S1,S2, S3,S4 are switched at high carrier Fig. 12. Simulink model for PV based MLI with MPPT
frequency. The amplitude and frequency modulation ratio is
defined as,Amplitude modulation (ma) ratio is expressed as,

ma= (12)

Frequency modulation ratio (mf) can be expressed as,

mf = (13)

where, fs is PWM frequency and f1 is fundamental frequency.

mf should be an odd integer, otherwise DC component may
exist and even harmonics will be present at the output
voltage Fig. 11 shows the carrier and reference waveform for
dual carrier modulation technique.
Fig. 13. Switching pattern for seven level inverter

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 International Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences (IJEAS)
ISSN: 2394-3661, Volume-2, Issue-8, August 2015

VII. CALCULATION OF PERFORMANCE

PARAMETER

A.Crest Factor:-

Crest factor is a measure of a waveform, such as alternating

current or sound, showing the ratio of peak values to the
average value. In other words, crest factor indicates how
extreme the peaks are in a waveform.

Vpeak (14)
C.F =
Vrms
Fig. 14.Output voltage of capacitor selection circuit B.PAPR:-
The peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is a related measure
that is defined as the peak amplitude squared (giving the
peak power) divided by the RMS value squared (giving the
averagepower).
Vpeak 2
PAPR =
Vrms 2 (15)
C.Distortion factor:-

The distortion factor is the result from a mathematical

equation. The equation is resembles the geometrical means. It
is a measure for the intensity of the nonlinear distortions.

1/2
1 Vn
2

D.F = 2
V1 n 2,3,.... n
(16)
Fig. 15.Output voltage waveform for PV based MLI with MPPT
V1 Fundamental voltage
Von total Harmonics voltage
Fig. 13 shows PWM switching pattern for single phase seven
level inverter. Fig. 14 shows the output voltage waveform of
D.WTHD:-
capacitor selection circuit. Fig. 15 shows output waveform of
The weighted total harmonic distortion (WTHD) is a
the proposed single phase PV based seven-level inverter with
commonly used expression to assess the quality of pulse width
MPPT. The FFT spectrum of the load voltage is found using
modulated (PWM) inverter waveforms. The WTHD weights
the FFT analysis tool is shown in Fig..
the voltage harmonics inversely with its frequency. While this
is adequate for some inductor type loads, the commonly
employed induction motor load has important effects
resulting from eddy currents in the rotor bars not incorporated
in the WTHD.
2
Vn

n2 n

WTHD =
V1 (17)

E.Harmonic Spread Factor:-

Harmonic Spread Factor is one of the deciding factors to

indicate noise generation in the motor. The harmonic spread
factor can be calculated for evaluating the quality of voltage
spectra of inverters.

H H0
N
1 2
HSF= j
N j 2
(18)
Hj = V alue of jth harmonic
Fig. 16.FFT analysis of load voltage of seven level inverter
H0 = Average value of all N Harmonics

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 Simulation and Performance Analysis of a Novel Seven-Level Inverter with DC-DC Converter for Photovoltaic
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Point (MPOP) of Photo-Voltaic (PV) power generation system,

American Journal of Engineering Research (AJER), Volume-02,
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Incremental Conductance Method with Direct Control Method Using
Boost Converter, Students Conference on Engineering and Systems
(SCES), 16-18 March 2012.
[5] P.Vaishnavi, R.Seyezhai, Analysis of PWM Strategies for a Single-
Phase Multilevel Inverter with Reduced Number of Switches for PV
Application, International Journal of Innovative Research in
Computer and Communication Engineering, Vol. 2, Issue 11,
November 2014.
[6] N. A. Rahim, K. Chaniago, and J. Selvaraj, Single-phase seven-level
Fig. 17.Switching Frequency Vs THD for PV based Dual carrier grid-connected inverter for photovoltaic system, IEEE Trans. Ind.
PWM Electr., Vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 24352443, June. 2011.
[7] J. Pereda and J. Dixon, High-frequency link: A solution for using only
one DC source in asymmetric cascaded multilevel inverters, IEEE
The THD values for the seven level inverter with PV based Trans.Ind. Electron., Vol. 58, no. 9, pp. 38843892, September. 2011.
Dual carrier PWM was around 27.75% for ma = 0.8. [8] N. Pandiarajan and Ranganath Muthu, Mathematical Modeling of
Photovoltaic Module with Simulink, International Conference on
Table 3.PARAMETER VALUES Electrical Energy Systems(ICEES 2011),3-5,2011 .
[9] Natarajan Pandiarajan, Ramabadran Ramaprabha, and Ranganath
Parameters Calculated Values Muthu, Application of Circuit Model for Photovoltaic Energy
Crest factor 1.414 Conversion System, International Journal of Photoenergy ,Hindawi
PAPR 1.999 Publishing Corporation Volume, 14 pages,2011.
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The THD value of PV based MPPT for single- phase seven International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced
level inverter is calculated theoretically as well as by Engineering , Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013.
simulation and the results are verified.

Table 4. THD VALUES

Methods THD (%)
Theoretical value 17.2%
Simulation 16.61%

VIII. CONCLUSION
This paper has presented a single- phase seven level inverter
for PV application. A dual carrier modulation technique has
been proposed for the multilevel inverter. The circuit
topology, modulation strategy and the operating principle of
the proposed inverter has been analyzed.The inverter has
been simulated using PV as a source. Using incremental
conductance algorithm, maximum power point has been
tracked. The performance parameters are computed. From the
FFT analysis, it is observed that THD is less for the proposed
dual carrier PWM technique and therefore, multilevel inverter
is a suitable topology for photovoltaic applications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors wish to thank the Management of SSN college of
Engieering,Chennai for providing all the computational
facilities to carry out this work.

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