Power losses in two- and three-level three phase photovoltaic inverters equipped with IGBTs

To increase efficiency is an essential target in photovoltaic (PV) power generation system. The losses of the whole system consist of several parts. This paper focuses on the losses of the hard-switching devices. An improved method to calculate the device losses is proposed. And influences of different factors like DC link voltage, input power, switching frequency and power factor on the losses are considered. Then this paper compares the losses of conventional two-level inverter and of diode-clamped three-level inverter to provide the evaluation of power losses under different working conditions. This is helpful to design and optimize a certain PV inverter. Calculating results based on an actual three phase 10kW PV inverter are presented.