Modified Cascaded Multilevel Grid-Connected Inverter to Enhance European Efficiency and Several Extended Topologies

This paper proposes a modified cascaded multilevel grid-connected inverter (MCM-GCI) suitable for photovoltaic grid-connected generation system, which considers wide operation range, low grid current total harmonics distortion (THD), and high European efficiency. In the proposed topology, a bidirectional power switch is added to the standard single-phase cascaded multilevel inverter (CMI) to implement the transformation between CMI mode and H-bridge inverter (HBI) mode. An online topology transformation approach of the MCM-GCI is proposed to guarantee the topology modes transformed safely and smoothly. The proposed MCM-GCI operates in CMI mode when the PV arrays' output voltage and power are low, and transforms into HBI mode when the PV arrays' output voltage and power are high. Experimental results of five-level MCM-GCI are represented to validate the feasibility of the proposed topology and it is also compared with other three classic grid-connected inverters to highlight its advantages. Furthermore, more structures based on hybrid CMI, which possess the topology transformation ability, are shown to further improve the generation range and obtain a higher efficiency of the system.