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Isolated flyback half-bridge OCC micro-inverter

Conference Paper · September 2014

DOI: 10.1109/ECCE.2014.6953802

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 Isolated Flyback Half-Bridge OCC Micro-Inverter

Alexander Abramovitz, Mojtaba Heydari, Ben Zhao, Keyue Smedley

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, USA

Abstract—This paper introduces a cost-effective isolated micro- source and the high voltage AC load, which is a desirable
inverter for photovoltaic applications. The proposed topology safety feature.
is comprised of a cascaded dual-output flyback DC-DC
converter and an OCC controlled half-bridge inverter. The The paper presents theory of operation, simulation, and
advantages of the proposed micro-inverter include low active experimental results obtained from a 150W prototype.
switch count, galvanic isolation, and excellent DC-AC power
decoupling. The paper presents theoretical analysis, simulation
and experimental results obtained from a 150W prototype. The II. PROPOSED TOPOLOGY AND PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION
experimental prototype demonstrated excellent quality of AC
output waveform at acceptable conversion efficiency. The schematic diagram of the proposed stand alone micro-
inverter is illustrated in Fig. 1. The micro-inverter is
implemented by a two stage approach employing an isolating
Flyback DC-DC front stage and a Half-Bridge DC-AC
I. INTRODUCTION inverter stage. The proposed Flyback-Half-Bridge (FHB)
The rapid growth of renewable market spurred a new topology results in a minimum component count (three
interest in inverter technologies for photovoltaic (PV) switches) isolated micro-inverter.
electricity generation. Due to its simplicity and low part The task of the flyback DC-DC front stage is to provide
count, flyback type inverter has attracted significant the required DC-DC step-up and isolation of the AC load
attentions from the research community. A variety of flyback side from the low DC voltage energy source. In Fig. 1 the
inverters for PV applications were reported in the past years. PV source is represented by the input DC source, Vg. The
The early approaches are based on two-stage [1, 2] flyback stage consists of a power switch, M1; a flyback
configurations. Typically, these designs use four or more transformer, T1, with two secondary windings of equal
active switches and have the advantage of high voltage DC number of turns; and rectifier diodes D1, D2.
link with a small decoupling capacitor to achieve small low
frequency ripple across the PV panel and, hence, stable The objective of the half bridge (HB) inverter is to
operating point and accurate MPPT. Single stage micro- perform DC-AC conversion. The HB inverter consists of
inverters reported in [3-7], are capable of performing voltage semiconductor switches M2, M3; two equal splitting
step-up, MPPT, and the DC-AC inversion functions all in capacitors C1 and C2; and a second order output filter Lo-Co.
one stage aiming to reduce the number of active switches. The AC load is represented by RL.
The major concern for the approaches in [4, 6] is the very
large DC-AC decoupling capacitor, ranging up to impractical
value of 5mF, which has to be mounted across the low
voltage photovoltaic (PV) panel. In articles [3, 5, 7], a
number of power decoupling circuits were investigated to
eliminate the need for the large capacitor. This, however,
requires using additional active switches.
This paper proposes a flyback type two-stage micro-
inverter with OCC control for solar power generation using
only three active switches. The proposed topology has the
advantage of low active switch count as the single stage Fig. 1. Topology of the proposed Flyback-Half-Bridge micro-inverter.
approaches and also excellent DC AC power decoupling as
the two stage approaches. Furthermore, the flyback stage
provides galvanic isolation between the low voltage DC

978-1-4799-5776-7/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE

 The principle of operation of the proposed FHB micro which allows realizing primary side controller without the
inverter is straight forward. Upon turn on of the switch M1 need for optocoupler feedback.
the flyback transformer is charged from the input source, Vg.
When the switch M1 is turned off, the flyback transformer, Control objective of a stand-alone PV micro-inverter is
T1, secondary and tertiary windings discharge into the generating the AC output voltage of desired amplitude and
splitting capacitors C1, C2, respectively. Equal turn ratio of frequency as dictated by the given reference voltage. One of
the secondary and tertiary windings result in about equal the challenges associated with implementation of controllers
voltages V1=V2 across the splitting capacitors. for half-bridge or full bridge inverters is sensing the floating
load voltage. Traditional control methods require application
The half bridge inverter leg, M2-M3, is switched so to of isolated feedback. In practice such circuits are based on
generate a high frequency bipolar PWM pulse train at the optocouplers or high voltage difference amplifiers. The high
input of the line filter Lo, Co. An appropriate switching signal voltage signals of power stage and their sharp slopes with
with the duty cycle, D, is applied to the high side switch M2, high dV/dt complicate the controller implementation.
whereas the switching signal with the complementary duty
cycle, D’=1-D, is applied to the low side switch M3. The This paper suggests an improved One Cycle Control
filtered high AC output voltage, Vo, is then provided for the (OCC) scheme to control the FHB micro inverter’s output
voltage. As compared to earlier approach [9], the proposed
load RL.
here OCC controller is free of instability problems and can
Note, that depend on the output voltage polarity, within a be realized using much simplified, ground referenced circuits
particular half cycle of the line frequency, one of the FHB as illustrated in Fig. 2. The proposed OCC controller
splitting capacitors has to provide the load with a larger implementation does not require load sensing, isolating
charge than the other. Thus, some misbalance tends to circuits or difference amplifiers and, therefore, is particularly
develop between the voltages V1 and V2 within the line half attractive for low cost applications.
cycle. The voltage balance is restored by two mechanisms.
Vd
Firstly, since the front stage is in fact a dual output flyback
converter, on the switching frequency scale, the output with M2
C1 Co D
lower voltage draws higher current than the one with higher
va iLo Lo vb
voltage [8]. Thus, the flyback transformer inherently steers
the power in favor of the heavy loaded output, where it is RL
most needed, and restores the voltage balance. Secondly, due C2 vo
D’ M3
to periodic nature of the AC output the residual imbalance is R1
equalized during the next line half cycle.
C
Furthermore, since the splitting capacitors of the half- Ri
bridge inverter require to be charged only to half the DC bus vref = Vref sinωt R2 D Q R

voltage a medium gain DC-DC step-up stage is adequate. D’ Q S Clock

The relaxed requirement on gain makes the implementation S1 vc Ci Dz
of the front stage less demanding.
Moreover, the FHB easily lends itself to application of Fig. 2. Proposed implementation of modified OCC control scheme for
One Cycle Control (OCC) that has the renowned feature of stand-alone FHB inverter.
attaining low distortion AC output even under severe DC
link ripple conditions. Therefore, under OCC better DC-AC
power decoupling can be achieved using lower-value and
Vgs1
lower-voltage decoupling capacitors.
t
Vgs2 DTs
III. OCC CONTROLLER CONSIDERATIONS
In grid connected applications maximum power point t
tracking (MPPT) controller should be employed to control
the micro-inverter’s front stage so to extract maximum
available power from the photovoltaic panel, however, in vref +va /K
stand-alone application described here, the power level is
determined by the load demand, hence, MPPT is not
va /K
necessary and the front stage controller can regulate the DC vc
bus voltage against load variations only.
Flyback front stage of the proposed FHB micro inverter is
particularly suitable for implementing auxiliary winding 0 t
method for sensing the voltage of the splitting capacitors,
Fig. 3. Key waveforms of the modified OCC controller.
 The OCC controller relationships can be derived with Design equation (6) allows a certain degree of freedom to
reference to OCC controller’s waveforms shown in Fig. 3. choose the circuit parameters.
The objective of the OCC controller is to generate an average
Additional practical design considerations regarding the
output voltage, , which closely follows a scaled replica
values of circuit parameters can be drawn from Fig. 3.
of the reference voltage, vref :
Clearly, to keep the duty cycle within the proper operating
(1) range, 1>D>0 , the following constrain has to be fulfilled
where, K is the desired gain constant of the HB inverter. (7)
The average output voltage, , is the difference Here, Vdmin is the worst case (lowest) DC bus voltage.
between the average voltage of the switched leg midpoint,
, and the midpoint voltage of the splitting capacitors, :
(2) V. SIMULATION RESULTS
Hence, applying (1) and (2), the key control equation of The feasibility of the proposed OCC controlled FBH
the OCC controller can be derived: micro-inverter was first evaluated by PSIM simulation.
Simulated waveforms of the FHB inverter on the switching
(3) frequency scale are shown in Fig. 4 (a).
The average voltage of the switched leg midpoint, ,
2 vr ef +va /K
throughout the switching cycle, can be calculated integrating
the dc link voltage, , for the duration of DTs, see Fig. 3. 1
vc
The resettable integrator, needed to implement (3) in practice, 0
can be realized by a simple Ri, Ci, S1 network as suggested in
Fig. 2. Here, the capacitor voltage response can be 4 ILo
approximated by: 0
-4
(4)
DTs
400
The simultaneous solution of (3) and (4), see the bottom 200
trace in Fig. 3, occurs at ton=DTs after start of the switching 0
Vb
cycle as the integrator output, vC(ton), intercepts the shifted 0.7659 0.766 0.7661 0.7626 0.7663
Time (s)
reference signal, :
(a)
(5)
100 Vo Kvref
Hence, the OCC controller is able to find the correct duty 0
cycle, D, in order to generate the required volt-sec at the -100
input of the output filter Lo, Co and so to generate the desired
average output voltage, Vo. Note that (4) inherently takes 4 ILo
account of variations of the bus voltage, Vd, during the 0
-4
switching cycle. Therefore, the sensitivity of OCC controlled
FHB inverter to line frequency ripple across dc bus is greatly 600
Vd
reduced, which helps attaining good quality output 400
va
waveform. 200
0
0.7 0.72 0.74 0.76 0.78
Time (s)
IV. OCC DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS FOR HB VSI (b)
For proper operation of the OCC controller the Fig. 4. (a) Waveforms of the OCC controlled FHB inverter on the switching
parameters Ri, R1, R2, and Ci , see Fig. 2, should be chosen frequency scale. Top trace: OCC comparator inputs- the shifted reference
according to the desired inverter gain, K, as conditioned by signal and the OCC ramp signal; middle trace: the output filter inductor
current ILo; bottom trace: bridge leg midpoint voltage Vb. (b) waveforms of
(1), (3) and (4): the FHB inverter on the line frequency scale. Top trace: comparison of the
scaled output voltage, Vo, and the reference signal, Vref; middle trace: the
(6) output filter inductor current ILo; bottom trace: DC bus voltage, Vd, and DC
bus midpoint voltage, Va.
here, is the switching frequency, and Vomax and Vrefmax
are the desired amplitude of the output voltage and the
available AC reference signal respectively. The top trace in Fig. 4 (a) shows the OCC comparator
inputs- the shifted reference signal, which corresponds to the
left hand side of eq. (3), and the ramping integrator waveform, Vref. The comparison reveals good quality of the
(capacitor voltage) according to (4). The rising slope of the output waveform. No zero crossing or saturation distortion
integrator voltage waveform corresponds to the DTs interval, can be seen. The prototype converter delivered up to 150 W
whereas the clamped portion of the waveforms corresponds of output power at 110 Vrms with peak efficiency over 89%,
to the (1-D)Ts interval. The middle trace shows the typical up as shown in Fig. 6. Experiments verify the feasibility of the
and down ramping of the output filter inductor current, ILo. proposed FHB micro inverter.
The resulting PWM bridge leg midpoint voltage, Vb, is
shown in the bottom trace.
FHB micro inverter waveforms on the line frequency
scale are shown in Fig. 4 (b). Here, the top trace shows the Vo
comparison of the scaled replica of the output voltage, Vo, Vref
and the reference signal, Vref, revealing that excellent
tracking is achieved by the OCC controller. The filter
inductor current, ILo, is depicted in middle trace and disclose
the profile of the ripple envelope thorough the line cycle.
The DC bus voltage, Vd, and DC bus midpoint voltage, Va,
are shown in bottom trace. Low frequency ripple component
can be observed.
The simulated waveforms of the OCC controller, shown
in Fig. 4 (a), agree with the theoretical expectations,
illustrated in Fig. 2, while the resultant simulated waveform, Fig. 5. Experimental waveforms: comparison of the output voltage, Vo, of
Vo, in Fig. 4 (b), stands in accordance with the key control the proposed micro-inverter vs. the reference voltage, Vref.
objective (1). This verifies the feasibility of the proposed
FHB micro-inverter and its OCC control scheme.
90.00
89.00
VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS 88.00
Experimental prototype FHB micro inverter was built Efficiency [%] 87.00
employing off the shelf components such as IR3101
86.00
integrated half bridge module. To improve the efficiency of
the flyback front stage energy regenerative snubber (not 85.00
shown in Fig. 1) was employed as proposed by [10], [11] to 84.00
capture and recycle the energy trapped in the leakage 0.00 50.00 100.00 150.00 200.00
inductance of the flyback transformer and mitigate the
voltage rise across M1 switch. Output Power [W]

Performance of the proposed topology and its control Fig. 6. Efficiency of the proposed Flyback- Half-bridge micro-inverter.
scheme were tested on the experimental prototype designed
for Vg=35V DC input voltage, with Vo=110Vrms/60Hz AC VII. CONCLUSION
output voltage, and rated output power Po=150W. The The paper introduced a two-stage Flyback Half-Bridge
parameters of the power stage are summarized in Table I. micro-inverter for PV energy generation. The paper
presented the topology, derivation of OCC control
TABLE I. PARAMETERS OF THE PROTOTYPE MICRO-INVERTER
relationships and design equations for the stand-alone
Parameters of the Power Stage version of the FHB DC-AC inverter stage.
Flyback Converter Half Bridge + OCC Controller The proposed FHB micro-inverter requires only three
Switch M1 IRFB4332PbF Switches(M2, M3) IR3101 active switches and is among the simplest possible
Diodes (D1, D2) C3D04065A Ri 4.9 MΩ configurations suited for low power low cost photovoltaic
applications.
Transf. T1: Lm 115uH Ci 1 nF
The inverter has the advantages of high quality output
Nprim, Nsec, Ntert 26, 104, 104 K 100 waveform, excellent decoupling of DC and AC power, small
Caps. C1, C2 47 uF fs 20 kHz DC decoupling capacitors, transformer isolation, low part
count, and simplicity.

Experimental waveforms of the proposed converter at full Simulation and experimental results strongly support the
theoretical expectations.
output power of are shown in Fig. 5, where, the output
voltage waveform, Vo, is compared to the reference
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