Performance analysis of soft-switching inverter for the photovoltaic power system

Most PV inverters employ a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation switching) scheme to reduce harmonics. The main disadvantage of these PV inverters is the high switching loss because the power switches turn on or off the entire load current while supporting high voltage stress. Another disadvantage of the PWM schemes is EMI due to high di/dt and dv/dt caused by switching. These problems actually decrease the efficiency of the PV inverter and demand EMI filters. To overcome these problems of the PV inverters, this paper describes the PV system with ARCP (Auxiliary Resonant Commutated Pole) inverter. Switching losses can be minimized by using ARCP inverters where the power switches turn on when the voltage across them is zero or turn off when the current through them is zero and the efficiency can be increased. The performance of the PV system with ARCP inverter is analyzed by means of the simulation. As a result, we may obtain the high performance of the PV System with ARCP inverter and expect to apply residential PV power system.