IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO.

2, FEBRUARY 2016

781

A Module-Integrated Isolated Solar Microinverter

Huang-Jen Chiu, Senior Member, IEEE, Yu-Kang Lo, Member, IEEE, Chun-Yu Yang, Shih-Jen Cheng, ChiMing Huang, Ching-Chun Chuang, Min-Chien Kuo, Yi-Ming Huang, Yuan-Bor Jean, and Yung-Cheng Huang

AbstractThis paper presents a module-integrated isolated solar

microinverter with pseudo-dc link. The studied grid-tied
microinverters can individually extract the maximum solar power
from each photovoltaic panel and transfer to the ac utility sys-tem.
High conversion efficiency and high maximum power point tracking
accuracy can be achieved with the studied pseudo-dc link topology.
The operation principles and design considerations of the studied
solar inverter are analyzed and discussed. A laboratory prototype is
implemented and tested to verify its feasibility.

Index TermsMaximum power point tracking (MPPT),

module-integrated isolated solar microinverter, pseudo-dc link.

I. INTRODUCTION

HILE fossil fuel exhaustion and greenhouse effects are

widely concerned around the world, one of the most important

issues toward these problems is to find alternative energy for
long-term solutions [1][3]. Green energy offering the promise of
clean and abundant energy gathered from self-renewing sources
such as solar energy, geothermal energy, and wind source is
broadly developed. Solar cells are unique in that they directly
convert the incident solar irradiation into electricity. Photovoltaic
(PV) power management concepts are essential to extract as
much power as possible from the solar energy. PV energy
systems are being extensively studied be-cause of their benefits
of environmental friendly and renewable characteristics [4][6].
Typically, several PV panels are con-nected in series to provide a
high-voltage output. However, the PV panels often work in
mismatching conditions due to dif-ferent panel orientations and
shadowing effects [7][10]. This mismatching problem thus
reduces the power production of the whole PV string. To
overcome the drawback, several literature works have proposed a
module-integrated converter concept [11][13]. Individual
maximum power point tracking (MPPT) converters are attached
to each PV panel for extracting its

Fig. 1. Conventional two-stage isolated solar microinverter.

maximum power. Such a PV module composed of a PV panel

with an individual dcac inverter is called a solar microinverter.
Fig. 1 shows the conventional two-stage solar microinverter that
consists of an isolated dcdc converter and a grid-tied dcac
inverter [14][17]. The prestage dcdc converter releases the
maximum solar energy from a PV panel and provides a highvoltage dc bus for the poststage dcac inverter that converts the
dc voltage to a sinusoidal ac output voltage and connects with the
ac grid system. The conversion efficiency of the conven-tional
solar microinverter is poor due to the two-stage power
conversion. High-voltage electrolytic capacitors (E-Caps) are
usually necessary on the dc bus between the dcdc and dcac
stages. They are expensive and seriously shorten the lifespan of
the solar microinverter that is cyclically exposed to a hightemperature environment under solar irradiation. The commercial success of the module-integrated microinverter depends on
its reliability and efficiency. A long operation lifespan and low
power loss must be ensured [18][20]. In this paper, a highperformance isolated solar microinverter with pseudo-dc link is
studied. High conversion efficiency, high MPPT accuracy, and
long lifespan can be achieved. The operation principles and
design considerations will be analyzed and described in the
following sections.

II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

Manuscript received June 9, 2012; accepted June 14, 2012. Date

of publi-cation July 6, 2012; date of current version September
13, 2012. This work was supported in part by AU Optronics
Corporation and in part by the National Science Council of
Taiwan under Grant NSC 100-2628-E-011-009-MY3.
H.-J. Chiu, Y.-K. Lo, C.-Y. Yang, S.-J. Cheng, C.-M. Huang,
and C.-C. Chuang are with the Department of Electronic
Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and
Technology,
Taipei
10607,
Taiwan
(e-mail:
hjchiu@mail.ntust.edu.tw;
yklo@mail.ntust.edu.tw;
D9902212@mail.ntust. edu.tw; D9602201@mail.ntust.edu.tw;
chun_chin_chuang@yahoo.com.tw).
M.-C. Kuo, Y.-M. Huang, Y.-B. Jean, and Y.-C. Huang are
with AU Optronics Corporation, Taichung 40763, Taiwan (email: Neddy.Kuo@ auo.com; Ben.YM.Huang@auo.com;
Weinborg.Jean@auo.com; Leo.YC. Huang@auo.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are
available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2012.2206351

Fig. 2 shows the circuit topology of the studied solar microinverter with pseudo-dc link. The grid-tied isolated solar
inverter consists of an inverse-buck current-fed isolated dualboost converter with a secondary voltage doubler, a polarity
selector, and an output LC filter. The high-voltage E-Caps are
not needed in the solar inverter circuit. As shown in Fig. 3,
there are two operation modes for the studied isolated solar
microinverter according to the ac grid voltage.
Mode 1: When the ac grid voltage is higher than a given
bound-ary voltage Vb expressed as (1), the solar
microinverter is operated under this mode

0278-0046/$31.00 2016 IEEE

2n

Vb =

1
boost,min

V
pv

(1)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2016

Fig. 2. Circuit topology of the studied isolated solar microinverter.

Fig. 4. Equivalent circuits under (a) Mode 1 and (b) Mode 2.

mode. The duty cycle boost of Q1 and Q2 is fixed at the

minimum value boost,min to provide a constant voltage gain Kb
as follows:

2n
Fig. 3. Operation mode of the studied isolated solar microinverter.

where n is the turns ratio of the isolation transformer T 1,

boost,min is the minimum duty cycle of Q1 and Q2, and Vpv
denotes the PV panel voltage. Under this operation mode, the
buck switch Qb is always on. PV panel voltage Vpv is fed
directly to the input of the interleaved dual-boost circuit. The
duty cycle boost of Q1 and Q2 is modulated as (2) to provide
a rectified sinusoidal waveform |Vg | on capacitors C1 and C2
that is connected with the ac grid system via the polarity
selector and the LC output filter. Because the polarity selector
is operated at the line frequency and switches at zero
crossing of the ac grid voltage, the switching loss can be
neglected. Assuming that the conduction losses on power
devices of the inverse-buck circuit and the polarity selector
can be ignored, the only loss of the studied isolated solar
microinverter is due to the single-stage power conversion of
the isolated dual-boost circuit. High conversion efficiency
can be thus achieved, i.e.,

= 1

boost

2nVpv

(2)
Mode 2: When the ac grid voltage is lower than the boundary
voltage Vb, the solar microinverter is operated under this
|Vg |

Kb =

(3)
The duty cycle buck of buck switch Qb is modulated as (4)
to provide a rectified sinusoidal waveform |Vg | on capacitors
C1 and C2 that is connected with the ac grid system via the
polarity selector and the LC output filter, i.e.,

boost

boost,min

=
|Vg |
KV

(4)

b pv

Fig. 4(a) and (b), respectively show the equivalent circuits of

the studied solar microinverter under Mode 1 and Mode 2.
Considering the smooth transition between these two operation
modes, an offset of the ramp carrier is applied to Mode 1 on the
top of the Mode 2 pulsewidth modulator, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 5 shows the theoretical switching waveforms of dualboost switches Q1 and Q2. As shown in Fig. 6, the circuit
operation during Mode 1 for the isolated solar inverter can be
divided into four switching states.
State 1(t0t1): During this time interval, power MOSFETs Q1 and
Q2 are both on and diodes D1 and D2 are off. The solar
energy is stored into input inductors L1 and L2. The load
energy is provided by voltage-doubler capacitors C1 and C2.

CHIU et al.: MODULE-INTEGRATED ISOLATED SOLAR MICROINVERTER

783

Fig. 5. Switching waveforms of dual-boost switches Q1 and Q2.

State 2(t1t2): At t1, power MOSFET Q1 is turned off. The solar energy stored in
input inductor L1 is released via transformer T 1 and diode D1.

State 3(t2t3): During this time interval, power MOSFETs Q1

and Q2 are both on once again and diodes D1 and D2 are
off. The current conduction path is the same with that of
State 1.
State 4(t3t4): At t3, power MOSFET Q2 is turned off. The so-lar
energy stored in input inductor L2 is released via trans-former T 1
and diode D2. After completing one switching cycle, the circuit
operation is back to State 1.

Fig. 7 shows the theoretical switching waveforms of the

buck switch Qb. As shown in Fig. 8, the circuit operation
during Mode 2 for the isolated solar inverter can be divided
into two switching states.
State 1(t0t1): During this time interval, power MOSFET Qb is
on and diode Db is off. The solar energy is stored into buck
inductor Lb. The voltage across Lb can be expressed as
follows:

=V

|Vg | .

(5)

pv
b
Lb
State 2(t1t2): At t1, power MOSFET Qb is turned off. The

solar energy stored in buck inductor Lb is released via

diode Db. The voltage across Lb can be expressed as

follows:

VLb =

|Vg |
K

Fig. 6. Switching states under Mode 1 operation.

(6)

low-voltage-rating devices for Q1 and Q2, low ON-state resis-tance Rds(on)

can significantly reduce the conduction losses. The voltage stresses for
diodes D1 and D2 and capacitors C1 and C2 can be determined by

III. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

A. Isolated Dual-Boost Circuit

V
Q1,Q2

g,pk

D1,D2,C1,C2

According to the waveforms shown in Fig. 5, the voltage

stresses on power MOSFETs Q1 and Q2 as can be represented
follows:

(8)

tance of L1 and L2 can be calculated by

(7)

where Vg,pk denotes the peak value of the ac grid voltage. The

Considering the current ripple amount IL1,L2, the induc-

g,pk

2n

L1 = L2 =

(|Vg |/2n Vpv) (1 boost)Ts

2I
L1,L2

transformer turns ratio is usually set higher than unity; there-

where Ts is the switching period of power MOSFETs Q1

fore, low voltage stresses on Q1 and Q2 can be achieved. With

and Q2.

(9)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2016

Fig. 7. Switching waveforms of the buck switch.

Fig. 9. Flowchart of the MPPT algorithm.

Fig. 8. Switching states under Mode 2 operation.

B. Inverse-Buck Circuit
According to the waveforms shown in Fig. 7, the voltage
stresses on power MOSFET Qb and diode Db can be represented as follows:

Fig. 10. Sampling point of PV panel current sensing.

=V .
Qb,Db

pv

(10)

With low-voltage-rating devices for Qb and Db, high conver-sion

efficiency can be achieved due to low conduction losses. Considering the
current ripple amount ILb, the inductance of Lb can be calculated by

Lb =

|Vg |(1 buck)Ts

K I
b

(11)

Lb

where Ts is the switching period of power MOSFET Qb.

C. MPPT Algorithm
For the studied isolated solar microinverter, a high MPPT
accuracy value is needed. At the PV side, the solar inverter
presents a power oscillation with twice the grid frequency that
influences the MPPT operation [1]. In this paper, we adopted a
modified perturb and observe (P&O) method, which has the ad-

vantages of simplicity and good performance. Fig. 9 shows the

flowchart of the used MPPT algorithm. The PV array voltage
Vpv[k] and array current Ipv[k] are both sensed to calculate the
instantaneous PV power. The obtained power is compared with
the power calculated in the previous iteration. The PV array
voltage is also compared with the previous PV array voltage to
determine whether the converter duty cycle should be increased
or decreased to reach the maximum power output. The maxi-mum
and minimum values of the instantaneous PV power, i.e., Ppv,max
and Ppv,min, respectively, are also monitored to obtain the
information of power oscillation at the PV side. It is used to
adjust the increment/decrement V of the reference to reach the
maximum power point operation [21][23]. Because the PV panel
current is a discontinuous switch current under Mode 2 for the
studied isolated solar microinverter, the sampling point of PV
current sensing (see Fig. 10) should be retained at the center of
on-duration for the buck switch Qb.

CHIU et al.: MODULE-INTEGRATED ISOLATED SOLAR MICROINVERTER

785

Fig. 11. Sinusoidal modulation (a) without and (b) with linearization
transformation.
TABLE I
SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS AND CIRCUIT PARAMETERS

Fig. 13. (a) Simulated and (b) measured gating signal waveforms.

Fig. 14. Measured waveforms for dual-boost circuit.

Fig. 12. Current/voltage curves of AUO PM240P00 PV panel.

D. Linearization Transformation
As mentioned in the previous section, there are two operation
modes for the studied isolated solar microinverter according to
the ac grid voltage. When the ac grid voltage is higher than a
given boundary voltage Vb expressed as (1), the solar
microinverter is operated under Mode 1. The buck switch Qb is
always on, and the isolated dual-boost circuit is modulated to
provide a rectified sinusoidal waveform |Vg | on capacitors C1 and
C2 that is connected with the ac grid system via the

polarity selector and the LC output filter. However, as shown

in (12), the voltage transfer ratio of the dual-boost circuit is
nonlinear. If a sinusoidal reference is used to modulate with
the high-frequency ramp carrier in Fig. 3, a waveform
distortion will occur, as shown in Fig. 11(a). Therefore, a
linearization transformation shown in Fig. 11(b) is needed for
the sinusoidal modulation operation, i.e.,
T
= |V |
2n
g
boost
.
=
(12)

pv

1
boost

IV. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATIONS

Table I shows the system specifications and circuit parame-ters
for a laboratory prototype of the studied solar microinverter.

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Fig. 15. Measured waveforms for grid voltage, grid current, and buck output
voltage under rated power at (a) 110-V and (b) 220-V grid voltages.

Fig. 17. MPPT waveforms under (a) 250-W (100%), (b) 125-W (50%), and
(c) 75-W (30%) solar power input conditions.

the isolated dual-boost circuit. It can be observed that the voltage

stress on power MOSFET Q1 is Vg,pk/2n that fulfills the
derivation of (7). The measured waveforms for ac grid voltage Vg

Fig. 16. Measured waveforms under (a) 187.5-W (75%) and (b) 75-W (30%)
solar power input conditions.

Fig. 12 shows the current versus voltage curves of a PV panel

AUO PM240P00 under different solar irradiation conditions. A
series of experimental tests has been carried out to verify the
feasibility of the proposed scheme. For convenience in these
experiments, Agilent solar simulator E4367A is used as the power
source. Fig. 13(a) and (b) shows the simulated and measured
gating signal waveforms for the studied isolated solar
microinverter. It is agreed with the theoretical waveforms shown
in Fig. 3. Fig. 14 shows the measured waveforms for

, grid current Ig , and buck output voltage Vbuck under 250-W

rated power at 110- and 220-V grid voltage conditions are shown
in Fig. 15(a) and (b). Fig. 16(a) and (b) shows the measured
waveforms under 75% and 30% solar power input conditions.
Fig. 17(a)(c) shows the measured MPPT wave-forms under 75W (30%), 125-W (50%), and 250-W (100%) input conditions,
respectively. High MPPT accuracy can be achieved. The
measured conversion efficiency and MPPT ac-curacy of the
studied isolated solar microinverter are listed in Tables II and III.
Fig. 18 shows a performance comparison between the studied
solar microinverter and the conventional two-stage scheme in Fig.
1. It can be observed that the studied solar microinverter with
pseudo-dc link has higher conversion efficiency. Moreover, the
E-Cap used in the conventional solar inverter is not needed such
that the lifetime can be prolonged under high-temperature
operation conditions.

V. CONCLUSION
This paper has presented a grid-tied isolated solar microinverter. A high-voltage E-Cap is not needed, and the lifetime of

CHIU et al.: MODULE-INTEGRATED ISOLATED SOLAR MICROINVERTER

787

TABLE II
MEASURED PERFORMANCE AT 110-V GRID VOLTAGE CONDITION
[9]

[10]
[11]
TABLE III
MEASURED PERFORMANCE AT 220-V GRID VOLTAGE CONDITION

[12]
[13]

[14]

[15]

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Fig. 18. Performance comparisons with the conventional scheme.

the studied module-integrated solar inverter can be then prolonged. High conversion efficiency and high MPPT accuracy
characteristics can be also achieved. In the experimental verifications, the MPPT accuracy of the developed solar microinverter is around 0.98, whereas the measured CEC efficiency
can be up to 93%.
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Huang-Jen Chiu (M00SM09) was born in ILan, Taiwan, in 1971. He received the B.E. and
Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the
National Taiwan University of Science and
Technology (NTUST), Taipei, Taiwan, in 1996 and
2000, respectively.
From August 2000 to July 2002, he was an
Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, I-Shou University, Kaohsi-ung,
Taiwan. From August 2002 to July 2006, he was
with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, Chung Li, Taiwan. Since
August 2006, he has been with the Department of Electronic Engineering,
NTUST, where he is currently a Professor. His research interests include
high-efficiency LED drivers, soft-switching techniques, electromagnetic
compati-bility issues, power factor correction topologies, electronic ballast,
and DSP control in renewable energy applications.
Dr. Chiu is a Senior Member of the IEEE Power Electronics Society. His
work brought him several distinctive awards, including the Young Researcher
Award in 2004 from the National Science Council of Taiwan, the Outstanding
Teaching Award and the Excellent Research Award in 2009 from NTUST,
and the Y. Z. Hsu Scientific Paper Award in 2010.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2016

Yu-Kang Lo (M96) was born in Chiayi, Taiwan, in

1969. He received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan, in 1991 and 1995, respectively.
Since 1995, he has been with the faculty of the
Department of Electronic Engineering, National
Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei,
Taiwan, where he is currently a Professor and in charge
of the Power Electronic Laboratory and the Power
Electronics Technology Center. His research interests
include the design and analysis of a variety

of switch-mode power converters and power factor correctors.

Dr. Lo is a member of the IEEE Power Electronics and Industrial
Electronics societies.

Chun-Yu Yang was born in Hualien, Taiwan, in

1987. He received the B.E. degree in electronic
engi-neering from National Taiwan University of
Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 2010,
and is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at
the same university.
His research interests include switching-mode
power supplies, photovoltaic system, and DSP control applications.

Shih-Jen Cheng was born in Kinmen, Taiwan, in

1981. He received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Kao Yuan University, Kaohsiung,
Taiwan, in 2005; the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Chung Yuan Christian University,
Chung Li, Taiwan, in 2007; and the Ph.D. degree in
electronic engineering from the National Taiwan
University of Science and Technology (NTUST),
Taipei, Taiwan, in 2010.
He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fel-low with the Power
Electronics Technology Center, NTUST. His research interests are LED
drivers, field-programmable gate array,
and DSP control applications in renewable energy applications.

Chi-Ming Huang was born in Taichung, Taiwan,

in 1987. He received the B.E. degree in electronic
engineering from the National Taiwan University of
Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, and is
currently working toward the Masters degree at the
same university.
His research interests include the design and
anal-ysis of photovoltaic microinverters and DSP
control in renewable energy applications.

Ching-Chun Chuang was born in Taiwan in 1977. He

received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from
the National Kaohsiung University of Applied
Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 2003, and the M.S.
degree in electrical engineering from Chung Yuan
Christian University, Chung Li, Taiwan, in 2007. He is
currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at Na-tional
Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei,
Taiwan.

From 2003 to 2004, he was a Technician with the Department of System

Control, HOPE Automation Company, Ltd., Tainan, Taiwan. From 2007 to
2008, he was an Engineer
with the Department of Medium and Small Size Research and Development,
Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Ltd., Taoyuan, Taiwan. His research interests
include the design and implementation of switching-mode power supplies,
digital power converter, active power line conditioner, and renewable-energy
power-conversion system.

Min-Chien Kuo was born in Changhua, Taiwan, in

1974. He received the B.E. degree in electrical
engineering from the National Taiwan University of
Science and Technology (NTUST), Taipei, Taiwan,
in 1999, and the MBA degree from Ming Chuan
University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, in 2002.
From July 2002 to September 2004, he was an
Electronic Engineer in the Department of Electronic
Engineering of TFT-LCD, AU Optronics, Hsinchu,
Taiwan. From October 2004 to November 2005, he
was a Manager in the Department of Electronic
Engineering of TFT-LCD, AU Optronics. From December 2005 to September
2010, he was a Senior Manager in the Department of Field Application
Engineering of TFT-LCD, AU Optronics. Since October 2010, he has been
with the Department of System Technology, Photovoltaic R&D, AU
Optronics, Taichung, Taiwan.
Mr. Kuo was a recipient of several awards, including the First Prize Award
of College Research Project in 1999 from NTUST and the Award of
Engineering Excellence Award in 2004 from AU Optronics.

Yi-Ming Huang was born in Changhua, Taiwan, in

1981. He received the M.S. degree in electrical
engineering from Chung Yuan Christian University,
Chung Li, Taiwan, in 2006.
From August 2006 to June 2009, he was an Electrical Engineer in the Department of Desktop Mon-itor
Product, AU Optronics Corporation, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
In June 2009, he joined the Solar Power System
Technology Department, AU Optronics Cor-poration,
Taichung, Taiwan, where he is a currently a Section
Manager. He has several cutting-edge prod-

uct development experiences such as DisplayPort LCD display product and

integrated ACM solar power system products. Furthermore, he has 2-MWp
solar power plant design experiences.

Yuan-Bor Jean was born in Changhua, Taiwan, in

1976. He received the M.E. degree in electronic
engineering from the National Yunlin University of
Science and Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan, in 2001.
Currently, he is with AU Optronics Corporation,
Hsinchu, Taiwan. His research interest is active
power filter during his time in the graduate school.

Yung-Cheng Huang was born in Tainan, Taiwan, in

1985. He received the M.S. degree in electronic
engineering from the National Kaohsiung University of
Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 2010.

Since August 2010, he has been with the Solar

Power System Technology Department, AU
Optron-ics Corporation, Taichung, Taiwan, where
he is cur-rently a Senior Engineer.