Concept study for fully integrated and photovoltaic inverter

This paper presents a concept study on the monolithic integration of module-integrated converters for the application in grid-connected photovoltaic modules with output powers smaller than 10kW. Therefore three possible models on the basis of the actual grid requirements are developed and their characteristics are compared. These concepts use a boost converter on submodule level to improve the performance in mismatch situations. The boost converter is optimised considering different DC link voltages, areas and submodule numbers. An efficiency of 95.1% is achieved with four submodules and area requirements of 12mm2. In a comparison of the energy output under partial shading of all three concepts, it can be shown that a small number of submodules is advantageous for the energy output. It is shown that a solution with submodule converters and a module-integrated inverter has benefits for cost-effective integration and newer application scenarios.