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ScienceDirect
Solar Energy 97 (2013) 285–292
www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

PLL-less single stage grid-connected photovoltaic inverter with

rapid maximum power point tracking
K.M. Tsang a, W.L. Chan a, X. Tang b,⇑
a
Department of Electrical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
b
College of electrical and information engineering, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Hunan, China

Received 3 March 2013; received in revised form 19 July 2013; accepted 15 August 2013
Available online 18 September 2013

Communicated by: Associate Editor Elias Stefanakos

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic way of designing control scheme for a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) inverter featuring rapid
maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and grid current shaping without using any phase-locked loop (PLL) circuitry. A simple integral
controller has been designed for the tracking of the maximum power point of a PV array based on the extremum seeking control method
to provide a reference PV output current for the grid interface. For the grid-connected inverter, two current loop controllers have been
designed. One of the current loop controllers is designed to shape the inverter output current while the other current control loop is to
follow the reference received from the maximum power point tracking algorithm and to provide a reference inverter output current for
the PV inverter without largely disturbing the maximum power point of the PV array. Four power switches are used to achieve three
output levels and MPPT. Moreover, it is unnecessary to use any energy storage such as rechargeable battery. Experimental results
are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the tracking and control scheme.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Photovoltaic; Three-level grid-connected inverter; Maximum power point tracking; Grid current shaping

1. Introduction in crystalline silicon-based solar cells while thin-film solar cells

Because of dramatic increase in energy consumption for the
last decades, resources and environmental problem are emerg-
ing (Sulaiman et al., 2012). Fossil fuel reserves are running out
and the environmental impact of the emissions from their
combustion is undesirable. It is necessary to reduce carbon
emissions and environmental pollutions. Solar energy is an
alternative energy gaining increased interests from govern-
ments, industry and academia because it is green and sustain-
able (Liu et al., 2011). The early stage of photovoltaic
development was directly toward space applications, for which
cost was not a major concern (Taherbaneh et al., 2011).
Recently, efficiency in the range of 20–25% has been achieved
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 13574187596.
E-mail addresses: eekmtsan@polyu.edu.hk (K.M. Tsang), eewlchan@
polyu.edu.hk (W.L. Chan), tangxin_csu@163.com (X. Tang).
could reach 20%. Ultra high efficiencies of over 40% have been
achieved in multi-junction cells. In fact, the PV market is grow-
ing rapidly, and the price is constantly decreasing (Razykov
et al., 2011). One of the most popular standalone applications
of the PV energy utilization is water pumping system driven by
an electric motor. However, grid-connected applications have
experienced strong development over the past few years
(Vighetti et al., 2012). Solar electricity generation using build-
ing-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) Liu et al., 2012 can assist
in reducing commercial building loads and offering peak-shav-
ing benefits on top of the on-site generation of electricity. The
role of grid-connected BIPV in reducing the load demands of a
large and urban commercial building located in a warm cli-
mate in Spain was reported in Castro et al. (2005).
For commercially available PV systems, individual solar
cells are connected in series and parallel to form modules to
deliver required levels of DC power. It is also necessary to

0038-092X/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2013.08.017
286 K.M. Tsang et al. / Solar Energy 97 (2013) 285–292

use inverter (Wu et al., 2012) if AC power, such as grid-tied

system, is needed. Voltage and current changes are vs RL
expected at the DC side of the inverter. As reported in
Dua et al. (2013), the inverter interface is essential to con-
necting renewable energy sources to the grid. The interface ip
L1
ic
L2
has two main functions: extracting the maximum amount
S1 S2
of power from the PV modules and conversion of DC
ig
power to an appropriate form of AC power for the grid
connection. The current from the PV generator changes vp C vc vg
with the solar radiation and temperature conditions and
PV modules present a non-linear current–voltage curve, S3 S4
so for each solar radiation and temperature conditions
there exists an optimum working load which leads to Fig. 1. A schematic diagram for the PV grid interface.
extract the maximum power from the PV modules (Gao
et al., 2013). Tracking the maximum power point (MPP)
Moradi et al., 2013 of a PV module is an essential task in
a PV control system because it maximizes the power output L1 i_p ¼ vp  vc
of the PV system for a given set of conditions (Kouchaki C v_ c ¼ ip  ic
et al., 2013). Current control is a key element to obtain L2 i_g ¼ vg  vs ð1Þ
the maximum power output of PV systems besides finding
vg ¼ dvc
the MPP. A repetitive controller can track a sinusoidal ref-
erence theoretically. However, there is the trade-off ic ¼ dig
between tracking accuracy and system stability (Mastrom- where L1 is the inductor connected to the PV panel, L2 is the
auro et al., 2012). The one-cycle control is simple and cost- inductor connected to the grid, vc is the voltage across the
effective but the control performance is sensitive to the capacitor C, ic is the discharging current from the capacitor,
user-defined constants (Mario et al., 2008). In this paper, ig is the current entering the grid, vg is the output voltage of
the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for PV array the inverter, d is the duty ratio for the inverter bridge and vs is
has been designed to synchronize with the control scheme the grid voltage, respectively. d takes on the value between
of the grid-tied interface without using any PLL circuitry 1 and 1. If d = 0.5, the switches S1 and S4 will be on for half
(Letting et al., 2012) as supply voltage feedforward control a switching cycle followed by S1 and S4 on for half a switch-
has been employed. The current regulators are designed ing cycle. If d = 0.5, the switches S2 and S3 will be on for
taking into considerations of the PV module and grid spec- half a switching cycle followed by S3 and S4 on for half a
ifications. The hardware requirement is not demanding. switching cycle. When S1 and S4 are on, the inverter output
Only four power switches are required to achieve three out- vg = vc. When S1 and S2 are on, the output vg = 0. If
put levels (Khemissi et al., 2013) and MPPT. Moreover, it d2 = 0.5, the switches S2 and S3 will be on for half a
is unnecessary to use any energy storage such as recharge- switching cycle followed by S3 and S4 on for half a switching
able battery. Although three-level inverter has been cycle. When S2 and S3 are on, the inverter output vg = vc.
employed in this paper, other multi-level inverter (Tsang When S3 and S4 are on, the output vg = 0. If S1, S2, S3 and S4
and Chan, 2012) could also be used. Experimental results are switching in this configuration, a three-level inverter can
are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the grid be realized using only four switches.
interface in maximum power point tracking and output
current shaping (Tang et al., 2012). 2.1. Grid current control

2. PV grid interface If the dynamics of the capacitor voltage vc is very much

slower than the dynamics of the inverter output current ig,
Fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram for the PV grid inter- the capacitor voltage can be regarded as constant and from
face. To extract maximum power from the PV array, the (1) the dynamics of the inverter output current can be
current ip drawn from the PV array has to be maintained approximated as:
to a steady value because the power extracted will be lower
if the current drawn is above or below the current at the L2 i_g ¼ dU m  vs ð2Þ
maximum power point. A low-pass LC filter is attached where Um is the nominal capacitor voltage at the steady
to the PV array such that the current drawn from the PV state. Consider the addition of a feedforward controller
array will have small ripples and close to maximum power of the form:
can be extracted from the PV array at all time. If the inter-
1
face is driven by pulse width modulation (PWM) signal, GF ðsÞ ¼ ð3Þ
the state averaging dynamics of the interface can be vc
described as: and a proportional controller of the form:
 K.M. Tsang et al. / Solar Energy 97 (2013) 285–292 287

current control loop is inherently unstable because of the very

Fig. 2. Block diagram for the grid current control loop.
GPI1 ðsÞ ¼ K P 1
where KP1 is a constant to form a closed-loop control pro-
cess. The purpose of adding the feedforward controller is to
cancel the effect of vs on the inverter output current ig and
the proportional controller forces the inverter output current
ig to follow a reference output current igr (Tsang and Chan,
2006). Fig. 2 shows the block diagram of the current control
loop. If the model is the true representation of the process,
the closed-loop transfer function can be approximated as:
I g ðsÞ K P 1U m
¼ ð5Þ
I gr ðsÞ L2 s þ K P 1 U m
If the bandwidth of the grid current control loop is set to
xig and xig has to be lower than the switching frequency of
the interface, the required controller gain can be obtained as:
xig L2
KP1 ¼
Um
and the required duty ratio can be obtained as:
vs
d ¼ K P 1 ðigr  ig Þ þ
vc
poorly damped LC filer in the input stage of the grid interface.
The error voltage between the PV output voltage and the capac-
itor voltage is fed back to the input side in order to stabilize the
control loop. The feedback gain controller is given by:
GD2 ðsÞ ¼ K D2 ð10Þ
Fig. 3a shows the block diagram of the PV current con-
trol loop. At the steady state, the PV output current ip will
be equal to the capacitor discharge current ic. Assuming
there is no power loss:
ð4Þ
vp ip ¼ V rms igðrmsÞ ð11Þ
where Vrms and ig(rms) are the root-mean-squared value of
the grid voltage vs and inverter output current ig respec-
tively. If the dynamics of the PV current control loop is
set to be very much slower than the grid current control
loop, the inverter output current ig quickly follows igr
and the gain from the magnitude of igr to ic in the PV cur-
rent control loop can be approximated to VUrms m
. A steady
state approximation of the PV current control loop is
shown in Fig. 3b. Here vs and d are regarded as output dis-
turbances to the PV output current and they are excluded
ð6Þ
ð7Þ
(a)

2.2. PV array current control loop

From (1) the PV array current ip will be equal to the

capacitor discharge current ic at the steady state. Controlling
ic indirectly controls ip and ic itself is affected by the grid cur-
rent ig. From (1), the PV array current, the discharge current
and the capacitor voltage dynamics can be described by:
L1 i_p ¼ vp  vc (b)
C v_ c ¼ ip  ic ð8Þ
ic ¼ dig
For the PV current control loop, it has to generate a refer-
ence current igr which indirectly generates a capacitor discharg-
ing current ic for the regulation of the capacitor voltage and the
PV output current. The reference inverter output current is set
to be in phase and of the same shape as the grid voltage such
that the output of the inverter will have the least effect on the
current harmonics of the grid. An integral controller
K I2
GI2 ðsÞ ¼ ð9Þ
s
(c)
is included in the control loop such that the PV output current
will be equal to the required current at the steady state. The PV Fig. 3. Block diagram for the PV current control loop.
288 K.M. Tsang et al. / Solar Energy 97 (2013) 285–292

from the plot. As the grid voltage is used to derive the maximum power under varying irradiance. An improvement
required inverter output current, it can be regarded as on the constant voltage method uses the open circuit voltage
external disturbance to the PV output current control loop. to estimate the maximum power output voltage while the
One simple way to reduce its effect on the PV output cur- short circuit current method uses the short circuit current
rent is to set the bandwidth of the PV current control loop to estimate the maximum power output current. Perturb
to be very much lower than the grid supply frequency such and observe method searches for the maximum power point
that the effect of the supply voltage on the PV current con- by changing the PV voltage or current and detecting the
trol loop will be substantially attenuated by the lowpass change in PV output power. The step size for the search
characteristic of the control loop. The closed-loop charac- affects the rate of convergence of the tracking. Also, the
teristic equation can be approximated as: method may fail under the rapidly changing atmospheric
V rms K D2 L 2 V rms K I2 conditions (Petrone et al., 2011). A faster searching technique
DðsÞ ¼ LCs3 þ s þsþ ð12Þ for the PV array can be realized using the extremum seeking
Um Um
control (Heydari-doostabad et al., 2013). From the power
If one of the poles is placed at: versus current PV characteristic curve, four cases can be dis-
V rms K I2 tinguished. If DP > 0 and Dip > 0, where DP is the change of
s¼ ð13Þ power and Dip is the change of current from the PV array, the
Um
maximum power point can be obtained in increasing ip. If
and extracted from (12), the resulted second order polyno- DP < 0 and Dip < 0, the maximum power point can be
mial becomes: obtained in increasing ip. If DP > 0 and Dip < 0, the maxi-
V rms L mum power point can be obtained in decreasing ip. If
LCs2 þ ðK D2  K I2 CÞs DP < 0 and Dip > 0, the maximum power point can be
Um
2 obtained in decreasing ip.
ð1  V rmsUK2 I2 L ðK D2  K I2 CÞÞs þ V rms
Um
K I2
Fig. 4 shows the extremum seeking control block dia-
þ m
¼0 ð14Þ
s þ V rms
Um
K I2
gram in realizing the four distinguished cases for the MPPT
of PV array. Instead of a sinusoidal perturbation (Letting
If: et al., 2012), a disturbance on the PV array current of the
V 2rms K I2 L form:
ðK D2  K I2 CÞ  1 ð15Þ  pt
U 2m
DI ¼ asgn sin ð19Þ
(13) can further be approximated as: T
V rms L where a is the magnitude of the disturbance and T is the
LCs2 þ ðK D2  K I2 CÞs þ 1 ¼ 0 ð16Þ
Um duration for either positive or negative half cycle, is added
The undamped natural frequency for (16) is given by: to the control loop to persistently excite the seeking proce-
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffi dure. For the same magnitude of perturbation a, the square
1 wave perturbation converges faster than the sinusoidal per-
xip ¼ ð17Þ turbation because the sum of changes in half cycle of oscil-
LC
lation for a square waveform is larger than a sinusoidal
and the damping ratio for (16) is given by: waveform. In theory, the control loop is stable for any va-
V rms ðK D2  K I2 CÞ lue of Kmppt > 0. As the extremum seeking control involves
fip ¼ ð18Þ the derivative of the power, low-pass filtering of the raw
2Cxip U m
power is required in order to remove the unwanted high
Based on (13), (17), and (18), the dominant characteris- frequency noise in the approximate derivative signal. The
tic of the PV current control loop can easily be set by KD2
and KI2. Notice that Vrms is taken as the nominal rms volt-
age of the supply grid. Fig. 3c shows the connection dia-
gram for the two current controllers and the derivation
of the duty ratio d from the control loops.

3. Rapid maximum power point tracking

There are a number of different approaches for maximum

power point tracking (MPPT) Shaiek et al., 2013. They are
the constant voltage method, open circuit voltage method,
short circuit method, perturb and observe method and the
incremental conductance method. The constant voltage
method is the simplest method but it has been commented Fig. 4. Block diagram for the maximum power point tracking control
that the method could only collect about 80% of the available loop.
 K.M. Tsang et al. / Solar Energy 97 (2013) 285–292
filter will introduce phase shift or time delay in the filtered
signal and this will affect the stability of the control loop
especially for large value of Kmppt. If the time delay of filter,
magnitude and frequency of current disturbance, and the
gain of the PV array are taken into account, a reasonable
gain for the integral controller can be taken as:
2 vp
K mppt ¼ ð20Þ
sT aV oc
where Voc is the open circuit voltage for the PV array and s is
the approximate time delay of filter. The magnitude of the
disturbance a has to be sufficiently large such that the power
level with positive and negative disturbances can clearly be
identified and sufficiently small such that the output power
will not be too fluctuated. The frequency of the disturbance
has to be selected to a value such that the transient of the
change of power for a step change in the current can be fully
captured within half cycle of the excitation. The required PV
array current can be obtained as:
Z to 31.25 kHz. An industrial PC was used to sample all required
dP DI
ipr ¼ DI þ K mppt dt ð21Þ
dt a
The speed of convergence can be set by a, T and Kmppt.
4. PV simulator
To test the performance of the maximum power point
tracking control loop, current tracking and current shaping
of the grid-connected inverter, a PV simulator with open
circuit voltage of 600 V and short-circuited current of 5 A
was built in connecting 200 V 6 A DII6A2 diodes in series
and a constant current source was connected to the diodes
as shown in Fig. 5. Different amplitudes of current were
injected into the simulator at 25 °C and the output charac-
teristics were collected. Fig. 6a and b show the voltage
against the current and the voltage against delivered power
respectively. The maximum power points were also high-
lighted for different amplitudes of constant current source.
Clearly, the characteristics of the PV simulator and the real
PV array are very similar. The constant current source of
the PV simulator could be regarded as the short-circuited
current of a PV array. A plot of the maximum power point
against the short-circuited current is shown in Fig. 7. A
quadratic equation of the form:
P mp ¼ 11:81I 2sc þ 226:8I sc ð22Þ
is well fitted to the data set where Pmp is the maximum power
delivered and Isc is the short-circuited current of the simula-
tor. Fig. 7 also shows the fitted curve superimposed on the
collected data and a very close approximation has been ob-
tained and an estimate of the maximum power at some other
operating points can easily be obtained from (22).
5. Implementation of the PV grid interface
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed grid inter-
face, an experimental setup was built to handle 50 Hz 220 Vrms
supply. Power MOSFETs, SPP17N80C3, were used to realize
289
ip
constant
current
source
Isc
Fig. 5. A PV simulator.
the switches of the inverter. The inductors were chosen as
L1 = 7.66 mH and L2 = 0.82 mH and the capacitor used was
C = 3300 lF. The switching frequency for the PWM was set
variables and to implement the control loops. The sampling
frequency was set to 10 kHz. From the characteristic curve
of the simulator, the nominal capacitor voltage Um was set
to 450 V which was around the voltage at maximum power
when the short-circuited current was half rated. If the band-
width of the grid current control loop was set to 1 kHz, from
(6) the required controller gain became:
K P 1 ¼ 0:0114 ð23Þ
For the PV current control loop, the bandwidth was set
to 2.5 Hz and the damping ratio was set to 1 such that the
PV current control loop and the capacitor voltage dynam-
ics would be very much slower than the grid current control
loop. The 50 Hz signal and its higher harmonics entering
the PV current control loop would also be substantially
attenuated by the loop dynamics. From (13):
K I2 ¼ 32:13 ð24Þ
if the dominant pole was place at 5p. From (18):
K D2 ¼ 2:79 ð25Þ
With (24) and (25), the closed-loop poles of (12) were
situated at 19.49, 113.89 and 279.95 and the dominant
pole characteristics was very close to the specified value 5.
To test the performance of the current tracking of the PV
current control loop and the delivering of power to the grid,
the PV simulator was connected to the input of the interface
and the constant current source was set to 4 A. The reference
PV output current was fixed at 3.55 A. Fig. 8 shows the per-
formance of the control scheme. The PV output voltage was
rather steady and the mean output voltage was 473 V. The
inverter output current had the same shape of the grid volt-
age and it was also in phase with the grid voltage. The mean
PV output current was 3.48 A. Because of the ripples in the
PV output current, the average delivered power was only
around 95% of the available maximum power. This clearly
demonstrated the effectiveness of the interface in conveying
power from the PV panel to the grid. Fig. 9 shows the
290 K.M. Tsang et al. / Solar Energy 97 (2013) 285–292

Isc = 5A
5

Isc = 4A
4

Current (A)
Isc = 3A
3

Isc = 2A
2

Isc = 1A
1
Isc = 0.5A

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Voltage (V)
(a) Simulator output current against output voltage

2500

Vmp = 494V
2000 Imp = 4.46A

Isc = 5A

Vmp = 486V
1500 Imp = 3.55A
Power (W)

Isc = 4A

Vmp = 468V
Imp = 2.67A
1000
Isc = 3A

Vmp = 445V
Imp = 1.79A
500 Isc = 2A

Vmp = 416V
Isc = 1A Imp = 0.87A
Vmp = 380V
IV = 0.5A Imp = 0.44A
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Voltage (V)
(b) Simulator output power against output voltage

Fig. 6. Characteristic curves of the PV simulator at 25 °C.

2500
50% of the available maximum power. Even though the
inverter output current was in phase with the phase voltage,
2000
it composed of a lot of high order harmonics. This clearly
demonstrated that the input stage LC filtering was required
1500
in order to improve the average power extracted from the
PV panel. Even though the limit cycle oscillations can be
1000
removed in slowing down the two current controllers, this
will affect the grid current tracking and the speed of MPPT.
500
The implementation of the extremum seeking control loop
was on the same hardware and also sampling at 10 kHz. As
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 derivative of power with respect to time was required, a linear
phase finite impulse response differentiator with 51 coeffi-
Fig. 7. Relationship between maximum power point and the short cients and a passband up to 100 Hz and stopband starting
circuited current at 25 °C. from 250 Hz had been implemented to obtain the derivative
of power. The time delay introduced by the differentiator
performance of the interface if the filtering capacitor was was s = 0.0025 s. For the amplitude of excitation, a was set
removed. As the reference PV output current was fixed at to roughly 2% of the maximum short-circuited current of
3.55 A and the action of the current controllers were fast, the PV simulator such that it would be large enough to detect
the control system experienced limit cycle oscillations. There the difference and small enough to not disturb the system too
were large variations in the PV output voltage and the PV much. In this example, it was set to a = 0.1 A. For the setting
output current. The limit cycle oscillation also affected the of the duration of excitation, it had to be long enough for the
inverter output current. The extracted power was less than transient to settle down. As the bandwidth of the input cur-
 K.M. Tsang et al. / Solar Energy 97 (2013) 285–292 291

steady-state response of the inverter which was shown in

Fig. 10d showed that the inverter output current was of the
same shape and in phase with the grid voltage.

6. Conclusions

A systematic approach of designing controllers for max-

imum power point tracking, current tracking and shaping
for grid-connected PV inverter were presented. The effec-
tiveness of the proposed controller setting in maximum
power point tracking was clearly demonstrated. Experi-
mental results also demonstrated that the grid interface
together with the current loop controllers effectively con-
veyed the power from the PV array to the grid because

Channel 1 - PV output voltage 700

Channel 2 – PV output current 600

Channel 3 – Grid voltage
Channel 4 – Inverter output current 500

Voltage (V)
Fig. 8. Tracking performance of the inverter interface. 400

300
rent tracking loop was set to 2.5 Hz, the transient of the cur-
200
rent would die down in around 0.25 s. In this example, the
duration T was set to 0.25 s. As the open circuit voltage 100
Voc of the PV simulator was around 600 V, from (20) the
0
gain of extremum seeking control loop became Kmppt = 53.33. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

The maximum power point tracking control was then com- Time (s)

bined with the current tracking controllers to form a com- (a) PV output voltage
plete system. Fig. 10 shows the tracking performance of the 5
whole system. The short-circuited current was set to 5 A 4.5
and the available maximum power was 2203 W. The initial 4
PV output current was zero. Fig. 10a and b showed that 3.5
the PV output voltage gradually reduced to around 478 V
Current (A)

3
and the PV output increased to 4.28 A. Fig. 10c showed that 2.5
the maximum power point was tracked in about 20 s. The 2
1.5
1
0.5
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Time (s)
(b) PV output current
2500

2000
Power (W)

1500

1000

500

extracted power
maximum power
Channel 1 - PV output voltage 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Channel 2 – PV output current
Time (s)
Channel 3 – Grid voltage
Channel 4 – Inverter output current (c) Extracted power

Fig. 9. Tracking performance of the inverter interface without filtering Fig. 10. Tracking performance of extremum seeking control and current
capacitor. shaping controllers.
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Acknowledgment photovoltaic system. Solar Energy 86 (7), 2067–2082.
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The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Evaluation end-of-life power generation of a satellite solar array.
Energy Conversion and Management 52, 2518–2525.
Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The authors gratefully
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