Design and Implementation of a novel Z source Multilevel inverter for Photovoltaic Applications

Photovoltaics is an emerging technology across the globe to scatter the power crisis. Unlike before many countries have come forward to erect huge capacities of solar power plants. Therefore the small challenges related to the efficient operation of PV systems are to be addressed. This paper proposes an inverter which can operate in conditions of intermittence and generate power with the available sunlight. The concept of the inverter is based on, clubbing the properties of a Z source inverter and multilevel inverter. The proposed inverter has a Z source network in the front end and multilevel inverter in the load side. 10 levels of voltage is obtained which can generate a near sinusoidal output waveform. A unique Pulse Width Modulation technique was adopted to control the switches of the inverter which can be interfaced with the Perturb and Observe MPPT algorithm. The system performance was assessed using simulation. The output characteristics show that the system is well suited for PV applications and the proposed inverter can operate with a very high voltage gain and less THD value.