Principle and Application of Inverter in Photovoltaic Power Generation System

At present, China's photovoltaic power generation system is mainly a direct current system, which means that the energy from the solar battery charges the battery, and the battery directly supplies power to the load. For example, the solar energy household lighting system used in the northwest region of China and the microwave station power supply system far from the power grid are all DC system. Such a system is simple in structure and low in cost. However, due to different DC voltages of the load (such as 12V, 24V, 48V, etc.), it is difficult to achieve system standardization and compatibility, especially for civil power, since most of the AC loads use DC power. Powered photovoltaic power sources are difficult to enter the market as commodities.

In addition, photovoltaic power generation will eventually achieve grid-connected operation, which must adopt a mature market model. In the future, AC photovoltaic power generation systems will become the mainstream of photovoltaic power generation. Photovoltaic power generation system requires a photovoltaic power generation system that uses AC power to output the photovoltaic power generation system. It is composed of a photovoltaic array, a charge and discharge controller, a battery, and an inverter. (The grid-connected power generation system can generally eliminate the need for batteries.) The device is a key component. Photovoltaic power generation systems require high inverters:

1. Requires higher efficiency. Due to the current high price of solar cells, in order to maximize the use of solar cells and improve system efficiency, we must try to improve the efficiency of the inverter.

2. Requires high reliability. At present, photovoltaic power generation systems are mainly used in remote areas, and many power stations are unattended and maintained. This requires the inverter to have a reasonable circuit structure, strict component screening, and requires the inverter to have various protection functions, such as input direct current. Reverse polarity protection, AC output short circuit protection, overheating, overload protection, etc.

3. Requires a wide range of DC input voltage to adapt to, because the terminal voltage of the solar cell varies with the load and the intensity of sunlight, although the battery has an important role in the voltage of the solar battery, but because the battery voltage varies with the remaining battery capacity and internal resistance The fluctuation, especially when the battery is aging, its terminal voltage has a wide range of variation, such as 12V battery, the terminal voltage can be varied from 10V to 16V, which requires the inverter must be within a large DC input voltage range. Ensure normal operation and ensure the stability of the AC output voltage.

4. In medium- and large-capacity photovoltaic power generation systems, the output of the inverter power supply should be a sine wave with a small distortion. This is due to the fact that in medium- and large-capacity systems, if square-wave power is used, the output will contain more harmonic components, and higher harmonics will cause additional losses. The load of many photovoltaic power generation systems is communication or instrumentation equipment. The equipment has higher requirements on the quality of the power grid. When the large-capacity photovoltaic power generation system is connected to the grid, it is required that the inverter output a sine wave current in order to avoid power pollution with the public power grid. The inverter converts the DC power into AC power. If the DC voltage is low, the AC voltage is boosted through the AC transformer and the standard AC voltage and frequency are obtained. For high-capacity inverters, because the DC bus voltage is relatively high, the AC output generally does not require transformer boost to reach 220V. In medium- and small-capacity inverters, the DC voltage is low, such as 12V and 24V. It is necessary to design a boost circuit. Medium and small-capacity inverters generally have three kinds of push-pull inverter circuits, full-bridge inverter circuits and high-frequency boost inverter circuits. The push-pull circuit connects the neutral plug of the step-up transformer to the positive power supply and the two power transistors Alternating the work, the output gets AC power. Since the power transistors are connected in common, the driving and control circuits are simple, and because the transformer has a certain leakage inductance, the short-circuit current can be limited, thus improving the reliability of the circuit. Its disadvantages are low transformer utilization and poor ability to drive inductive loads. The full-bridge inverter circuit overcomes the disadvantages of the push-pull circuit. The power transistor regulates the output pulse width and the rms value of the output AC voltage changes accordingly. Since this circuit has a freewheeling circuit, the output voltage waveform will not be distorted even for inductive loads. The disadvantage of this circuit is that the power transistors of the upper and lower arms are not common ground, so special drive circuits or isolated power supplies must be used. In addition, in order to prevent the common conduction of the upper and lower arms, it is necessary to design the first turn-off and turn-on circuit, that is, the dead time must be set, and the circuit structure thereof is relatively complicated.

Push-pull circuit and full-bridge circuit output must be added with step-up transformers. Because step-up transformers are bulky, inefficient, and expensive, with the development of power electronics and microelectronics technology, high-frequency boost converter technology is used to implement inverse Change, can achieve high power density inverter, this inverter circuit booster circuit using a push-pull structure, but the operating frequency is above 20KHz, step-up transformer uses high-frequency magnetic core material, and thus small size, light weight After the high-frequency inverter is transformed into a high-frequency alternating current through a high-frequency transformer, and then high-voltage direct current is obtained through a high-frequency rectifier filter circuit (usually more than 300V), and then the inverter is transformed through the power frequency inverter circuit. With this circuit structure, the power of the inverter is greatly increased, the no-load loss of the inverter is correspondingly reduced, and the efficiency is improved. The disadvantage of this circuit is that the circuit is complex and the reliability is lower than the above two circuits.