MAXIMIZING PHOTOVOLTAIC EFFICIENCY USING INTERLEAVED DC-DC CONVERTERS AND ASYMMETRICAL NINE-LEVEL INVERTER CONFIGURATION

Abstract

This paper presents a new method based on the integration of an interleaved soft switching boost converter with an asymmetrical nine-level Cascaded H-bridge inverter for use in a photovoltaic system. The purpose of this system is to improve grid performance metrics related to power quality for photovoltaic sources while addressing power balancing issues. This converter structure is employed to optimize the efficiency of the photovoltaic power generating system and minimize switching losses with resonant soft-switching techniques. Applying an ANFIS-based control strategy enhances the dynamics of the DC-link voltage. For design and validation purposes, models in MATLAB/Simulink have been constructed for the proposed topology. The intelligent inverter developed obtains a peak efficiency of 93% at a unity power factor, with a total harmonic distortion of 3.56% in the output voltage. Unlike 5-level and 7-level Cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter topologies, the comparison results empirically validate the proposed topology's stronger reliability. Moreover, with respect to the settling time, the proposed intelligent ANFIS controller demonstrated superior performance, achieving 0.3 seconds as compared to existing approaches like the PI controller