Challenges and design considerations of PV inverters in the future smart grids

Decentralisation of power generation is generally acknowledged one of characteristics of future smart grids. Different conventional and renewable energy sources will be installed in different locations but supporting the common grid network. The energy sources will work separately but with communication to optimize the power flow in the grids. Currently, solar energy is the most commonly used among the renewable energy sources, since installation of PV panel is very flexible, it can be down to few kilowatts for residential applications or up to tens Megawatts for solar farms. However, the disadvantage is that solar energy harvesting only operates during day time, and the amount of extracting energy highly depends on the weather conditions. It creates power quality issues for the future smart grids due to this unpredictable energy flows. Furthermore, emerging semiconductors is getting close to the market. The design of PV inverters will be a new era to achieve high energy efficiency and reliable. The paper will present the challenges of the future PV inverter design based on the grid-environment, the regulations and the applications. Moreover, the technology trend of improving system performance of PV inverters, including semiconductors, magnetic materials and converter topology, will be reviewed and discussed.