Power rating analysis and protection for photovoltaic-isolated port based differential power processing systems

Abstract In a photovoltaic generation system (PGS), photovoltaic (PV) modules are often connected in series for increased string voltage. However, a significant reduction in the actual output power is observed due to the manufacturing tolerance, module aging and partial shaded. Compared with conventional methods such as bypass diodes and PV module reconfiguration, modular distributed architecture especially the differential power processing (DPP) is able to yield high output power even under partial shading conditions. Moreover, the system efficiency is improved since only the differential power is processed by the DPP converters. This paper mainly focuses on the power rating analysis and protection of PV-isolated Port (PV-IP) based DPP systems considering the significant power stress difference among DPP converters under different partial shading conditions. The voltage equalization (VE) control used in this work is able to provide up to 77% efficiency improvement through the simulation evaluation. The protection algorithm is proposed for the PV-IP DPP architecture to improve the system reliability even when some DPP converters are found failed. With the proposed protection strategy, not only the high output power yield can be maintained, but also the modular design of DPP converters with smaller power capacity can be achieved. Simulation and indoor experimental tests under various partial shading conditions were carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed power rating analysis and protection scheme.