Design and Implementation of a Pure Sine Wave Single Phase

Inverter for Photovoltaic Applications

Mohamed A.Ghalib1, Yasser S.Abdalla 2, R. M.Mostafa3
1 Automatic Control Department, Faculty of Industrial Education, Beni-suef University, Egypt.

Master_bsu@yahoo.com
2 Electrical Department, Faculty of Industrial Education, Suez University, Egypt.
3 Electronics and Automatic Control Department, Beni-Suef University, Egypt

Abstract
This paper aims at developing the control circuit for a single phase The basic circuit of this system is a PIC microcontroller which is developed to generate a sinusoidal PWM
with the dead time controller. The dead time control is useful to reduce the cost and components. The
inverter which produces a pure sine wave with an output voltage that extremely important problem to be considered is the dead time control. The timing diagram of the dead
has the same magnitude and frequency as a grid voltage. A time is shown in Fig. 3.
microcontroller, based on an advanced technology to generate a sine There is a potential overlapping signals between ON period switches pair S1, S4 and S2, S3 pair in H-bridge
inverter. This overlap can cause the short circuit of DC bus [6]. The dead time can be controlled through
wave with fewer harmonics, less cost and a simpler design. The programming by using PIC microcontroller. The period of dead time must be suitable to avoid the problem
technique used is the sinusoidal pulse width modulation signal (SPWM) of switch damage and harmonic.
which is generated by microcontroller. The designed inverter is tested on
various AC loads and is essentially focused upon low power electronic
applications such as a lamp, a fan and chargers etc. The proposed model
of the inverter can improve the output wave forms of the inverter and
the dead time control reduced to 63s. The finished design is simulated
in Proteus and PSIM software to ensure output results which is verified
practically.
Keywords: A microcontroller; Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM); Dead time; Analog
to digital converter (ADC), Inverter.

Introduction
Nowadays, the world needs the electricity to be increased. The main reasons for the energy increase
demand are the population. It must research for an alternative source of power generation. One of these
sources is a renewable energy which possibly has no harm on the environment [1]. The need of the power Fig.1 Block diagram of the proposed system.
rating inverter is required to operate electrical and electronic appliances smoothly. Most of the available
commercially uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) are actually square wave inverters or quasi sine wave
inverters. Electronic devices, managed by these inverters will be damaged due to the contents of the
harmonics [2, 3]. For getting a pure sine wave, the SPWM switching technique is applied. This method
involves a certain pattern of switching used in the DC-to-AC inverter bridges [4, 5].
SPWM switching techniques are characterized by constant amplitude pulses with a different duty cycle
for each period. The most common method to generate this signal is to compare a sinusoidal with a
triangular waveform [6, 7, 8, 9]. Nowadays, the world needs the electricity to be increased. The main
reasons for the energy increase demand are the population, the economy growth and the rapid depletion of
fossils based on energy reserve and rapid growth of energy demand. Then, it must research for an
alternative source of power generation. One of these sources is a renewable energy which possibly has no
harm on the environment [1]. The need of the power rating inverter is required to operate electrical and Fig.3 Observation timing diagram of dead time.
electronic appliances smoothly. Most of the available commercially uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs)
are actually square wave inverters or quasi sine wave inverters. Electronic devices, managed by these
inverters will be damaged due to the contents of the harmonics [2, 3]. Available pure sine wave inverters
are too expensive and the output non sinusoidal, but the sine wave generation is extremely important in
Fig.2 The Full H-bridge single phase inverter.
power electronics. For getting a pure sine wave, the SPWM switching technique is applied. This method
involves a certain pattern of switching used in the DC-to-AC inverter bridges [4, 5]. The SPWM is a
powerful technique. It's mainly widely used in power electronics applications such as the motor driver,
UPS, and the renewable energy system [6].
Software Algorithm
SPWM switching techniques are characterized by constant amplitude pulses with a different duty cycle
for each period. The most common method to generate this signal is to compare a sinusoidal with a
triangular waveform [7, 8, 9].
The purpose of this work is to replace the convention method with the use of peripheral interface
controller (PIC) microcontroller. Microcontroller is capable of storing commands to generate the necessary
pulse width modulation waveform due to the built in PWM module. The microcontroller provides the
variable frequency pulse width modulation signal that controls the applied voltage on the gate drive by
using the system of PIC16f877A. The microcontroller is more simple and flexible to change control
algorithms in a real time without further changes in a hardware with it's low cost and reduces the
complexity of the control circuit for the signal phase inverter bridge [10]. The application of this inverter is
to be either for stand-alone or for grid connection from a direct supply of photovoltaic cells. The
microcontroller has built control circuit in dead time.
The purpose of this work is to replace the convention method with the use of peripheral interface
controller (PIC) microcontroller. Microcontroller is capable of storing commands to generate the necessary
pulse width modulation waveform due to the built in PWM module. The microcontroller is more simple
and flexible to change control algorithms in a real time without further changes in a hardware with it's low
cost and reduces the complexity of the control circuit for the signal phase inverter bridge [10].

Problem statement
1- The inverter is one of the power conversion device that is widely used in the world to convert DC input
voltage to AC output voltage. The output voltage wave form of ideal inverters should be sinusoidal.
However, the waveform of practical inverter is non-sinusoidal and contains harmonics [11, 12]. The
electronic devices, managed by this inverter will be damaged due to the contents of the harmonic.
Harmonics contents in inverter output depend on the number of pulses per cycle. [2, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]
Many researchers investigated that the output signal wave is distorted.
2- In switching the losses problem, the number of pulses per cycle is also affected. The use of high Fig.4 The flow chart for programming the signal phase inverter SPWM signal.
switching technique will contribute to the high power losses. The following factor is to be considered in Pseudo code contains the following steps:
order to meet the following requirements. 1. Initialize the variables and all peripheral microcontrollers.
I.The Cost of the equipment 2. Setting the address of the look up table.
II.The Size of the filter 3. Calculating the PWM module.
III.The Power loss in switching the element 4. Calculating the output voltage amplitude.
3- The most important problem to be considered is the dead time control. Dead time period must be 5. If the output voltage is equal to Vreference then returns step 2.
suitable to avoid the problem of damaging the switch and harmonic problem. If the dead time is short, it 6. If the output voltage is greater than Vreference then decreases the address of the look up table and returns
will cause damage to the switches and if it is long, it will cause increase in the total harmonic distortion, as to step 3.
studied in [6 ,7]. 7. If the output voltage is less than Vreference then increases the address in look up table and return to step
3.
The System and Characterization of the Proposed Design. 8. Going to step 1.
Figure 1 shows the basic block diagram of the proposed system. The range of the inverter circuit is to
obtain a desired output voltage of 220 V ac and a frequency of 50 Hz. The contents of the designed Gate Driver
system are:-
1- Power module of the inverter. The driving of the MOSFET gate is
2- The microcontroller circuit and programming software. dependent on two basic categories, a low-
3- Testing the inverter circuit. side and a high-side configured, in the full H-
bridge circuit. The high-side of the
The full H-bridge inverter circuit is used to convert a DC voltage to a sinusoidal AC voltage at a desired MOSFETs (Q1,Q2) can float between the
output voltage and frequency ground and the high voltage power, the low-
Generating a sin wave centered on zero voltage requires both positive and negative voltage across the side of the MOSFET (Q3,Q4) is connected
load. This can be achieved from a single source through the use of H-bridge inverter circuit as shown in between the power source and is constantly
Fig. 2. In standard H-bridge circuit, switches S1, S3, S2 and S4 are arranged in this configuration [18]. ground [7], the TLP250 driver, has an input
Both gating signal GS1 and GS3 are switched simultaneous at one half of cycle while both gating signal and output stage and power supply. This
GS2 and GS4 are simultaneous switched at the other half [13, 19, 20]. The difference is only at GS1 and driver is an optically isolated driver. The gate
GS3 signals leading GS2 and GS4 by half cycle or 180 degree of the switching signal. The output of the driver circuit is shown in Fig. 5. Fig. 5 the gate driver TLP250
circuit has a periodic waveform that is not sinusoidal [20]. The PIC microcontroller is used to generate
the required sinusoidal PWM signals to drive and switch the H-bridge MOSFET transistor.
 The input forward voltage will typically be between 1.6 V and 1.8 V, the propagation delay time will
typically between 0.15s and 0.5s and the maximum operating frequency is to be 25 kHz in datasheet.
When designing circuits with TLP250 a 100nf bypass capacitor (ceramic capacitor) is in output of the
driver, this capacitor called boost strip capacitor used to protect the driver of dv/dt, a capacitor stabilizes the
operation of the high gain linear amplifier in the TLP250.
Results and Discussion
The circuit diagram of the full H-bridge and driver circuits is shown in Fig. 6. In this section the design of
the hardware setup. The illustrated full H-bridge inverter consists of four IRL540N MOSFET switches
rated 100V, 36A and fast switching. This switch has ultra-low resistance 44 m, resulting in less power
dissipation and higher efficiency.
Figure 7 shows that proposed hardware setup of the implementation inverter circuit to obtain sinusoidal
wave AC output voltage with a rated voltage magnitude of 221 V AC and frequency 50Hz. These values are
agreeing with the voltage and frequency of the grid, the PIC16F877A microcontroller is operated at clock
speed of 20 MHz and the control signal sinusoidal PWM is set to be 16 KHz. The PIC16F877A is operating
5V, generated by a LM7805 linear voltage regulator. The compiler editor has used mikroC PRO for PIC and
PICKit 2 programmer V1.10.
The output value 221 V ac
DC power supply
PICKit 2 programmer
Gate driver TLP250
Fig.6 Circuit diagram of full H-bridge
Fig.7. Observation hardware setup of the
and driver circuits.
pure sine wave inverter with load 11W.
The operation of the circuit is as follows: The MOSFET driver TLP250 is used to apply the switching
pulses coming from the microcontroller to the MOSFET switches. The sinusoidal PWM signals are
produced by the microcontroller and used to drive the MOSFETs. For generating sinusoidal pulse width
modulation signal we divide each half cycle of sine wave into 32 changes in the PWM signal a half cycle
which takes 10ms. The duty cycle can be calculations from the following equation:
Yi = PWMmax*sin (i*180/n), where: PWM=0-255, (PWMmax=255) i = 0, 1, 2 ,.., n.
Figure.8 illustrates the output signal of the simulation and experimental work. The simulations have been
performed using PSIM and Proteus software to investigate the validity of the switching strategy.
Figure 8 shows the simulation and experimental results of the four control signals operation of the H-
bridge inverter, an oscilloscope numbered 54600B with 100MHz, two channels are used to measure the
experimental results. The PIC16f877A microcontroller is used to generate the required PWM signals to
drive and switch the H-bridge MOSFET transistor.
The two level PWM operation of the H-bridge inverter will have the high sides of the circuit switching at
the sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) control frequency of 16 kHz at a half cycle which takes 10ms the different
is only SPWM1 signal leading SPWM2 by half cycle and the low sides switching at the sine wave lower
frequency 50 Hz at a half cycle which takes 10ms also PWM1 control signal leading PWM2 by half cycle
or 180 degree of the switching control signals out of phase.
The two signals are then connected to essential conditioning elements to be able to switch ON the
MOSFET at the full bridge. The signals PWM going to the MOSFET (IRL 540N) will switch two
diagonal of the full H-bridge simultaneously at one of the two halves and the other two diagonal
MOSFET (IRL 540N) at the other halves.
Fig.9 The signal simulation (a) and experimental signal results
(b) of output waveform of full bridge single phase inverter.
Fig.8 illustrates microcontroller signal waveform generated
by simulation at (a) and by experimental at (b).
Figure 9 shows the simulation and the experimental results of output waveform of the full bridge single
phase inverter. The output voltage of H-bridge inverter has a periodic waveform that is not a sinusoidal
wave but to achieve a desired output AC sine wave signal by connecting the LC filter. The frequency of
the output wave from of the simulation and the experimental results is 50 Hz. This frequency is exactly
equal to grid frequency
It has been shows [6, 7] that the dead time measured period is of 180 s, Fig. 10 shows the dead time
measurement of the waveform in the H-bridge inverter from the simulation. The period of the dead time
must be suitable to avoid the problem of switch damage and harmonic. The measurement period of the
dead time in this work is reduced to 63 sec.
The output of the H-bridge inverter is shown in Fig. 11 passed to the step up transformer and the output of
the transformer is connected to the load through an LC filter to achieve the desired output AC sinusoidal
waveform.
The generation of the pure sinusoidal wave from the photovoltaic cells is the main objective of this work.
But actually, the output signal is distorted and investigated in many researches works [2, 13, 14, 15, 16,
17], as shown in figures [12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17].
Fig.9 The simulation signal results of the Dead
time measurement of the output waveform Fig. 10 The simulation signal results (a)
of full bridge single phase inverter. in PSIM and (b) in proteus
Fig. 12 represent reference No.2 Fig. 13 represent reference No.13 Fig. 14 represent reference No.14
Output a pure sine wave
Fig. 15 represent reference No.15 Fig. 16 represent reference No.16 Fig. 17 represent reference No.17
Fig.11 shows the simulation results of PSIM and Proteus output software sine waveform of the full H-
bridge single phase inverter and the experimental results of output waveforms of the inverter to ensure the
Load with connection output output waveform results a pure sine wave is practically verified. The inverter is tested on various ac loads.
H-bridge inverter
LC filter As shown in Figs. 18, 7, 19, 20.
The following conditions:
Loads 11W and 15W (lamp) connected in parallel.
DC input voltage of 18V
Input current of 3.5A
AC output voltage 221.3V and frequency of 50Hz
Fig.11 Observation hardware setup of Fig.12 Observation hardware setup of Fig.13 Observation setup of the pure
a pure sine Wave inverter without load. a pure sine wave inverter with load 15W sine wave inverter with two load 26W
Conclusion
1. The main task of this work is to develop and improve the control circuit for a single phase inverter
which has been implemented using PIC microcontroller.
2. The used method to control the inverter switch is the SPWM technique. This method is superior to
other methods because improve the quality of the output waveform.
3. The simulation results to are performed at PSIM and Proteus software and compared the experimental
results to performed by the LAB-module
4. The dead time is reduced to 63 s in the proposed comparing with the research which reach 180 s.
5. The tested inverter is loaded at various ac loads such as 11 W, 15 W and 26W.
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