International Conference on Microelectronics, Communication and Renewable Energy (ICMiCR-2013)

Modeling and Simulation of Single phase five level

inverter fed from renewable energy sources
Biju K

Rijil Ramchand

Department of Electrical&Electronics Engineering

College of Engineering Munnar
Munnar,Kerala,India
bijuk@ieee.org

Department of Electrical Engineering

NIT Calicut
Calicut,Kerala,India
rijil@nitc.ac.in

Abstract - In the current global energy scenario, importance of

power generation from renewable energy sources is increasing
day by day. The major reasons for this are limited availability of
fossil fuels and environmental hazards associated with traditional
power generation methods. Out of the various grid connected
renewable energy systems, solar photo-voltaic and wind energy
systems are most popular. This paper presents a new system
architecture for hybrid photovoltaic and wind energy system
connected to the grid. This method allows these renewable energy
sources to deliver the load together or independently depending
upon their availability. The proposed configuration uses a
modified five-level inverter topology for converting DC voltage
generated from renewable energy sources to AC voltage at 50Hz.
The usage of five-level inverter reduces Total Harmonic
Distortion (THD) in output voltage and helps in eliminating bulk
filters required at the output side. Simulation study of the
suggested system is carried out with MATLAB Simulink and
simulation results are provided.
Keywordshybrid system;
photovoltaic system;
generation; renewable energy; multilevel inverter.

I.

wind

INTRODUCTION

The increasing energy demand, increasing costs and

exhaustible nature of fossil fuels, and global environment
pollution have generated huge interest in renewable energy
resources. Other than hydroelectric power, wind and solar are
the most useful energy sources to satisfy our power
requirements. Wind energy is capable of producing huge
amounts of power, but its availability cant be predicted. Solar
power is available during the whole day but the solar irradiance
levels change because of the changes in the suns intensity and
shadows caused by many reasons. Generally solar and wind
powers are complementary in nature. Therefore the hybrid
photovoltaic and wind energy system has higher dependability
to give steady power than each of them operating individually.
Other benefit of the hybrid system is that the amount of the
battery storage can be decreased as hybrid system is more
reliable compared to their independent operation.
In this paper a boost converter for solar photovoltaic system
and a buck converter for wind energy system are used to make
the output voltage constant. It allows the charging of the
battery at constant voltage. A five level inverter is employed to
change the dc voltage from battery to ac voltage and connect to
the grid. Multilevel inverters synthesize a desired voltage from
several levels of direct current voltages as inputs. With the
increase in number of levels, the generated output waveform is

978-1-4673-5149-2/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

staircase wave with more number of steps. Thus output voltage

approaches the desired sinusoidal waveform. Main advantages
of using multilevel inverter topology are reduction of power
ratings of power devices and reduction in their cost [1]. The
basic concept of a multilevel converter is to get higher
operating voltage using a series connection of power
semiconductor switches with much lower voltage rating
compared to power switches used in conventional two-level
inverter[2]. These power switches are controlled such that more
number of voltage levels is generated at the output using
multiple dc sources.
The attractive features of a multilevel inverter are that
they can generate the output voltages with very low THD, can
draw input current with low distortion, and can operate at wide
range of switching frequencies from fundamental frequency to
very high frequency. The common topologies for multilevel
inverters are diode clamed, flying capacitor and cascaded Hbridge multilevel inverter. The paper provides a modified form
of multilevel inverter which uses less number of switches and
input DC sources [3]-[4].
II.

PROPOSED SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

The block diagram of the proposed architecture is shown in

Fig. 1. The input to the battery should be a constant voltage for

Figure 1.Block diagram of proposed architecture

the smooth charging of the battery. So the output of the solar
panel is fed through a boost converter to keep the output of the
solar panel voltage to a constant value of 12V. Here the wind
generator used is a 230V DC shunt generator. The output of
the wind generator is fed through a buck converter to make the
output voltage 12V. So the battery will be charged from both
solar and wind power. The output of the battery is fed to a 5
level multilevel inverter which converts it to ac [5]-[6].

International Conference on Microelectronics, Communication and Renewable Energy (ICMiCR-2013)

III.

MULTILEVEL INVERTER

IV.

The modified single phase five-level inverter uses a fullbridge structure having an auxiliary circuit. The circuit diagram
is shown in Fig. 2.

DC-DC CONVERTER

For converting dc voltage generated from solar

photovoltaic system and wind energy system to battery voltage
level, two DC-DC converters are used here. Boost converter is
employed to increase the voltage of solar photovoltaic system
to battery voltage level. Buck converter is used to reduce the
voltage developed by wind energy system to battery voltage
level.
A. Buck Converter
Output voltage of buck converter is Vo=D Vd, where
Vd is the input voltage and D is the duty ratio. The buck
converter is used to reduce the output voltage of the wind
generator to 12V so as to charge the battery.

Figure 2. Circuit diagram of five level inverter

The voltage across each DC capacitor is Vdc/2. The working
principle of the suggested inverter is to create five levels of
output voltage, Vdc, Vdc/2, 0, - Vdc/2 and - Vdc. An auxiliary
circuit consisting of four diodes and a switch is used for
generating five voltage levels at the output. Using proper
switching sequence in this modified circuit generates five
levels in output voltage [7]. Table 1 shows the switching
sequence used for creating five levels for the output voltage.
Table1: Switching sequence
S1

S2

S3

S4

S5

Vinv

Vdc

Vdc/2

-Vdc/2

-Vdc

B. Boost Converter
Output voltage of the boost converter is Vo=Vd/(1-D),
where Vd is the input voltage and D is the duty ratio. The
boost converter is used to increase the output voltage of the
solar panel to 12V [8].
V.

PV CELL MODELING

The equivalent circuit of a PV cell is shown in Fig. 4.An ideal

solar cell is modeled by a current source and a diode in
parallel with it. However no solar cell is ideal there by series
and shunt resistance are added to the model as shown in Fig. 4.
Rs is the series resistance which has a very small value. Rp is
the equivalent shunt resistance whose value is very high.
I
Rs
+

ID

Iph

The output voltage waveform of the ideal five level inverter

is shown in fig3.

Figure 3. Ideal five level output voltage waveform

Rp

IRp

RL

Figure 4. Equivalent circuit of PV cell

Applying Kirchoffs current law to the junction where Iph,
diode, Rp and Rs meet, we get,
Iph = Id + IRp + I
We get the following equation for the PV cell current
I=Iph (Id+IRp)
I = Iph-(Io[e(v+IRs/VT)-1]+V+IRs/Rp)
where Iph is insolation current, I is the cell current, Io is the
reverse saturation current, V is the cell voltage, Rs is the series
resistance, Rp is the parallel resistance, and VT is the thermal
voltage.
A. Modeling of PV array

International Conference on Microelectronics, Communication and Renewable Energy (ICMiCR-2013)

The building block of PV array is a solar cell, which
converts light energy into electricity. The equivalent circuit is
shown in fig5.
I
Rs
Ij

Iph
Rj

+
Rsh

RL
Figure 7. PV module subsystem

The subsystem for Irs is shown in Fig. 8.

Figure 5. Equivalent circuit of PV array
The current source Iph represents the cell photo current, Rj
is used to represent the non linear impedance of the p-n
junction, Rsh and R are used to represent the intrinsic shunt
and series resistance respectively. Usually Rsh and Rs are
neglected to simplify the analysis. The PV modules are further
interconnected in series-parallel combination to form PV
arrays. The mathematical model used to simplify the PV array
is represented by the equation
I=npIph-npIrs[e(qV/kTAns)-1]
Where I is the PV array output current, V is the PV array
output voltage ns is the number of cells in series, np is the
number of cells in parallel, q is the charge of an electron, k is
the Boltzman constant, A is the p-n junction ideality factor, T
is the cell temperature, and Irs is the cell reverse saturation
current. The factor A ranges from 1 to 5. The photo current Iph
depends on the solar radiation and cell temperature as follows
Iph=[Iscr+Ki(T-Tr)]S/100
Where Iscr is the cell short circuit current at reference
temperature and radiation, Ki is the short circuit current
temperature coefficient and S is the solar radiation in
MW/cm2.
The Simulink model of PV array is shown in Fig. 6.

Figure 8. Subsystem for Irs

Subsystem for Iph subsystem is shown in Fig. 9.

Figure 6. Simulink model of PV array

Figure 9. Subsystem for Iph

VI.

The PV module subsystem is shown in Fig. 7.

WIND TURBINE AND GENERATOR

Here the wind generator used is a permanent magnet DC

generator. The Simulink model of the wind turbine generator
is shown in Fig. 10.

International Conference on Microelectronics, Communication and Renewable Energy (ICMiCR-2013)

Figure 10.Simulink model of wind turbine generator

Wind turbine generates a torque which is used to
drive the generator. The most commonly used generators are
singly fed and doubly fed induction generators. They produce
alternating voltage as output. But in our application we require
DC output to charge the battery. Hence we used a permanent
magnet dc generator.
VII. SIMULINK MODEL OF MULTILEVEL INVERTER
Figure 12. Output voltage waveform

The simulink model of the five level inverter is

shown in Fig. 11.

The output current waveform is shown in fig 13.

s4
E

D4

D2

Pulse4

s2

Pulse2
Pulse
22

Load

C1
Pulse1

D3

Pulse5

s3

D5

Pulse
Pulse
33
3

s5
E

C2

s1

DC

Figure11.Simulink model of five level inverter

SIMULATION RESULTS
The output voltage waveform is shown in fig 12.
Figure 13. Output current waveform

International Conference on Microelectronics, Communication and Renewable Energy (ICMiCR-2013)

VIII.

CONCLUSION

The paper provides the modeling and simulation of a

five level inverter fed from hybrid energy sources. Solar and
wind power are the two sources being used. The proposed
system reduces both voltage & current THD and implements a
hybrid energy system. The proposed five-level inverter
topology has less number of switches and input DC sources in
comparison
with
conventional
cascaded
H-bridge
configuration.
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