2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

APAP2011 www.apap2011.org

*Corresponding author (email: zhuyongli@ieee.org)
Comparative study of two stages and single stage topologies for Grid-Tie
Photovoltaic Generation by PSCAD/EMTDC
ZHU YongLi
1*
, Yao JianGuo
1
, Wu Di
1
1
Research Center, State Grid Power Research Institute, Nanjing 210003, China
Abstract: This paper presents a comparison study of a typical grid-tie photovoltaic system between two types of topologies:
the two stages (boost circuit adds inverter) and the single stage (inverter alone adds a step-up transformer). Some essential
models built in this paper include PV array, Boost chopper and grid-tie inverter. The basic characteristics and descriptions of
these two topologies are described. Perturb and observe and incremental conductance methods are introduced for MPPT
(maximum power point tracking). As key-point, the out loop controller design details for the grid-tie inverter are investi-
gated. The PV array, two system topologies and two MPPT strategies are implemented in PSCAD/EMTDC using its us-
er-defined facility. Simulation results show that the output power of PV array can achieve a stable and accurate MPPT function
under ambient conditions change. At the same time, the inverter can maintain a unit power factor by controlling the transferred
instantaneous reactive power to zero in the synchronous d-q frame. The simulating results are compared with that of the two
stages case in aspects including energy converting efficiency, power quality, and MPPT accuracy. Through this study work,
engineers and researchers can obtain an overall comprehension about advantages and disadvantages of these two topologies in
designing a PV system.
Keywords: photovoltaic, MPPT, single stage, two stages, perturb and observe, incremental conductance,
PSCAD/EMTDC
1 Introduction
Recently, photovoltaic (PV) generation has become a hot
issue in renewable energy development worldwide. To
achieve best operation efficiency and economic profit, most
PV system need to adopt MPPT (maximum power point
tracking strategy) strategy under different work condition,
including ambient temperature change, irradiation change,
and load condition change. Regard to MPPT algorithms, a
lot of versions have been advanced [1-3]. The most com-
monly used methods are CVT (constant voltage tracking),
P&O (perturb and observe) and Incremental conductance
method (in this paper it is denoted as IncCond). Each
method has its advantage and disadvantage, however, in
practice the P&O method is almost the first choice since its
idea is very concise and implemented easily in hardware.
Now there are mainly two types of power electronic to-
pologies being used in photovoltaic generation field, i.e.,
single stage topology and two stages topologies [4-9]. The
two stages topology is composed of former DC/DC part and
latter inverter part. One stage, as the term suggests, consists
of the inverter only. The merit of two stages topology lies in
the convenience of designing its control scheme, but has to
burden more power loss than that of single stage [8]. Single
stage, on the contrary, can achieve relatively higher power
efficiency, but the control scheme is more complex since the
inverter alone must achieve all of the control objectives:
grid current following, power factor constant and MPPT
function [4, 7]. About these two topologies, presently there
are not many literatures investigating the difference of their
design details and little conclusion refer to their most suita-
ble applying occasion respectively. The MPPT methods
comparison for these two topologies is rarely investigated,
so a rigorous comparative study between the two topologies
under different MPPT algorithms is of high necessity and
would be beneficial to the PV system research.
The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the perfor-
mance of the two PV system topologies in aspects like
power efficiency, control scheme design, and MPPT accu-
racy. The PSCAD/EMTDC software is chosen as the simu-
lation tool. The article arrangement is as follows. The basic
structure and characteristics of a typical PV module are de-
scribed in second part. P&O and IncCond methods for
MPPT are briefly mentioned in part In part , four
cases are designed to validate the developed models and
corresponding MPPT algorithms. Simulation results and
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978-1-4244-9621-1/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection
discussion are provided in next part. The last part ends this
article with some clear conclusions related to performance
comparison between these two topologies.
2 Two types of topologies
1) Two stages topology
Commonly, the output voltage of the PV array is not high
enough to connect to the grid. Moreover, the voltage source
inverter (VSI) usually has a voltage-down property, which
causes the PV array + Inverter topology to output a lower
voltage, thus two stages topology is suggested. This topol-
ogy adds a voltage-up link part, usually configured as Fig-
ure 1. The DC/DC part often adopts a Boost circuit or some
other derived versions, like Buck-boost, isolated Boost, etc.
[1, 3]. Besides voltage-up function, the Boost circuit can
also offer a more stable input voltage for the inverter. The
main advantage of the two stages topology is the flexibility
of designing its control scheme since it has a higher free-
dom degree, i.e. more controllable variables, which means
multiple control objectives (MPPT, grid connecting, var
compensating, active filter, etc.) can share by two stages
respectively simultaneously [6, 7].
Figure 1 Two stages topology
2) Single stage topology
Although two stages topology has advantages in control-
ler design, it also has some deficiencies [5, 8]. With the cir-
cuit stages increasing, the power loss rises as well that
makes the holistic energy transferring efficiency decrease;
more stages also adds system complexity, thereby reduce
the system reliability. To enhance system efficiency, system
only relying on the inverter, i.e. so-called single stage to-
pology has been suggested, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Single stage topology
3 MPPT algorithm
The flow charts of the P&O and IncCond methods are de-
scribed below.
1) Perturb and Observe (P&O)
The P&O is the most commonly used MPPT algorithm
due to its simplicity. Figure 3 displays its classic flow chart.
After each perturbs operation, the current power is com-
puted and compared with previous value to determine the
power variation 'P and 'V . If 'P and 'V bear the same
sign, i.e. ' ' P V > 0, then the perturb direction keeps un-
changed (C = 0), otherwise perturbs voltage inversely.
Figure 3 Flow chart of P&O algorithm
Figuratively speaking, this method is to mimic a hill
climbing. It works well in slow changing environment but
has some limitations under rapidly changing atmospheric
conditions: it may lead to a slow MPPT speed or even in-
correct tracking. To overcome such problems, some mod-
ified versions have been put forward, though they are not in
the focus of this paper [2, 3].
2) IncCond
The Incremental Conductance method implements the
MPPT function through a rigorous mathematic way. To
achieve the MPPT, from the P-V characteristic curve, fol-
lowing equations must be satisfied:


0
dP dI
I U
dU dU
dI I
dU U
(1)
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2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection
(1) is the condition of acquiring MPPT, i.e. when the varia-
tion of output conductance equals to negative conductance.
Figure 4 Flow chart of IncCond Method
3 Parts modeling in PSCAD/EMTDC
3.1 PV array
The PV array model is built according to [5]. The current
output equations of a PV module of m cells are:
PH D
I I I (2)
1 1, 1,
,
[1 ( ) / ( )] ( )
a
PH c c SC c norm SC c norm
a norm
G
I T T I T I T
G
D u u u
(3)
( )/
0
1
S S
q V IR N
mnkT
D
I I e

(4)
3
1
1
1 1
1 1
0
( )/
1
( )
1
g
n
OC S
qV
nk Tc Tc sc c
qV T N
mnkT
I T T
I e
T
e












u u

(5)
PH
I
D
I
SH
R
Figure 5 Equivalent circuit of a PV cell
The meanings of symbols in equations above can be
found in Figure 5 and Table 1. For a array of Ns modules in
series and Np modules in parallel, equations are adjusted to:
( )/
1
S S
p PH p
q V IR N
NsmnkT
I N I N e

(6)
Table 1 Panel data of PV array*
Symbols Item Unit
T
c
Solar cell temperature Kelvin
T
a
ambient temperature Kelvin
G
a
ambient irradiation W/m
2
T
c1
solar cell temperature at Standard
Test Conditions (STC)
298.15K
I
sc
(T
c1
) short circuit current at STC 3.8A
G
a,nom
ambient irradiation at STC 1000 W/m
2
D
temperature coefficient of short
circuit current
0.0063
V
OC
(T
c1
) open circuit voltage at STC 21.1V
q electron charge 1.610
-19
C
k Boltzmann constant 1.3810
-23
J/K
n diode ideality factor 1.5
V
g
band gap voltage 1.12V
N
s
Number of modules in series 10
N
p
Number of modules in parallel 9
m Number of cells in a PV module 36
* Data partly from PV panel manufacturers product information.
Figure 6 shows the PV array model in PSCAD. The pan-
el data listed in Table 1 is from a panel manufacturer. Run-
ning this model in PSCAD/EMTDC obtains Figure 7. As
can be seen, with the temperature increasing the output of
PV array decreases and the MPP voltage moves toward left.
Figure 6 PV array model in PSCAD/EMTDC
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225
0.0
1.0k
2.0k
3.0k
4.0k
5.0k
+y
-y -x +x
25 C
$
75 C
$
50 C
$
Figure 7 P-V characteristic of modeled PV array
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2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection
3.3 MPPT control scheme
The basic control inner loop of grid-tie inverter for both
topologies is the same, i.e. the classic current decoupled
technique in d-q frame for three-phase VSI [5, 7]. Thus, the
main difference lies in the out loop, as shown in Figure 8 to
11. The single stage uses the Edcref generated by the MPPT
block as the DC voltage set value; while the two stages set
this value to a fixed value (800V in this paper) and the Edc-
ref is only used to control PWM signals for Boost circuit.
1) Single stage + P&O
Figure 8 MPPT controller for Single stage with P&O
2) Single stage + IncCond
Edc
Edc_ref
*
1000
Edc1
Boost PWM
IncCond
Iout
Edc1
I
P
D
-
F
-
Iout
D
+
F
-
Edc1
idref
Figure 9 MPPT controller for Single stage with IncCond
3) Two stages + P&O
Edc
Iout
duty
Boost_PWM
Boost PWM
P & O
Edc_ref
*
1000.0
Figure 10 MPPT controller for Two stages with P&O
4) Two stages + IncCond
duty
Boost_PWM
Edc_ref
Boost PWM
IncCond
Edc
Iout
*
1000.0
Figure 11 MPPT controller for Two stages with IncCond
T1
T1 T3
T4
T4 T6
T3
T2
1000.0
*
Pin
Pin
Ga
V
Ta
Ga
Iout
6
6
0
0

[
u
F
]
Edc
T3
T4
T2
T5
Ia
Ea
6
6
0
0

[
u
F
]
0.005 [H]
0.005[H]
0.005[H]
Ib
Ic
I
p
v
Eb
Ec
P = -4.472
Q = 0.4708
V= 0.1029
V
A
0.01 [ohm]
0.01 [ohm]
0.01 [ohm]
Edc
*
1000.0
*
0.001
Iout
Eab
If_c
If_b
If_a
AC Filter
#1 #2
100.0 [kVA]
100.0 [V] / 380.0 [V]
T
25.0
T1
T1 T3
T4
T4 T6
T3
T2
1000.0
*
Pin
Ppv
Ga
V
Ta
Ga
Iout
6
6
0
0
[u
F
]
Edc
T3
T4
T2
T5 Ia
Ea
6
6
0
0
[u
F
]
0.005 [H]
0.005[H]
0.005[H]
Ib
Ic
Ip
v
Eb
Ec
P = -4.448
Q = 0.6257
V= 0.3913
V
A Edc
*
1000.0
*
0.001
Iout
Eab
If_c
If_b
If_a
T
0.1 [H]
1
0
0
0
[u
F
]
Boost
Vboost L
-
L
,R
M
S
,3
8
0
V
,A
C
Ta
AC_Filter 3
a b c
25 27 29
53 55
25.0
Boost_PWM
Figure 12 Overall architectures of single stage and two stages topologies built in PSCAD
4 Case study and simulation results
Since the MPPT voltage transfers more sharply under tem-
perature change, to verify the model accuracy and compare
the two topologies more rigorously, simulations are carried
out during a temperature slope change: from 3s to 4s, T va-
ries from
$
25 C to
$
50 C . Considering two topologies and
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2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection
two MPPT methods mixed here, four cases are designed:
1) Single Stage + P & O
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0
0.0
1.0k
2.0k
3.0k
4.0k
5.0k
Pin
Figure 13 PV array output and MPP tracking curve
2) Single Stage + IncCond
Main : Graphs
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0
0.0
1.0k
2.0k
3.0k
4.0k
5.0k
Pin
Figure 14 PV array output and MPP tracking curve
3) Two stages + P&O
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0
0.0
1.0k
2.0k
3.0k
4.0k
5.0k
Pin
Figure 15 PV array output and MPP tracking curve
4) Two Stages + IncCond
P_PV
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0
0.0
1.0k
2.0k
3.0k
4.0k
5.0k
Pin
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2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection
Figure 16 PV array output and MPP tracking curve
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0
-0.050
-0.040
-0.030
-0.020
-0.010
0.000
0.010
0.020
0.030
0.040
0.050
if_a Usa
-0.080
-0.060
-0.040
-0.020
0.000
0.020
0.040
0.060
0.080
y
if_a Usa
Main ...
Q
-8.80641
Figure 17 Grid current and voltage of S + Inc
Table 2 Performance comparison between the two topologies
S +P&O S + Inc T+ P&O T + Inc
Power efficiency 98.48% 99.49% 98.11% 97.52%
THD (phase voltage) 4.5% 2.7% 0.27% 0.28%
MPPT accuracy
(ideal: 4000w)
3977w 3856.6w 3910.6w 3917.3w
The validity of the MPPT controllers can be watched di-
rectly by comparing the P-V characteristic curve in Figure
13 to 16 with Figure 7. Figure 17 shows that the grid current
follow the grid voltage narrowly (since the current positive
direction defined in this model is flowing out of grid, so in
the picture the current is inverse phase against voltage) and
the reactive power is nearly zero (8.8w) compared with ac-
tive power (3856.6w).
Table 2 compares the performance from three indexes:
power efficiency, phase voltage THD and MPPT accuracy,
which represent economy, power quality and controller va-
lidity respectively. According to expectation, the power ef-
ficiency of one stage is higher than that of two stages. The
fact that the power efficiency of IncCond is less than that of
P&O can be explained by the oscillation caused by the step
selection in IncCond method. It can be drawn from the THD
item that, there are less non-characteristic and low order
harmonics in the AC side of two stages than that of single
stage due to a more stable DC voltage control effect. All the
PV array output values in four cases are around the MPP
(losses are caused by filters dissipation and control oscilla-
tion). It indicates that there is not too much difference in
MPPT accuracy for the two topologies.
5 Conclusion
This paper compares the single stage topology and two
stages topology in power efficiency, power quality and
MPPT accuracy through modeling a complete grid-tie PV
generation system in PSCAD/EMTDC. Two classic MPPT
algorithms are implemented and some design details of the
out loop controllers are presented. Acquired results validate
the effectiveness of developed models and controllers.
Comparisons between the two topologies show that
1) Power efficiency: single stage topology better
2) DC Voltage stability and AC side voltage THD: two
stages topology better
3) MPPT accuracy: in an acceptable error range of con-
troller oscillation and ac filter loss, both can satisfied
accuracy requirements.
In a word, the PV system models developed in this paper
can be used in simulation studies for a class of grid-tie PV
generation occasion. The simulation results can help engi-
neers to choose a proper topology in PV system design.
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