A Novel High-Efficiency Inverter for Stand-Alone

and Grid-Connected Systems

Rou-Yong Duan and Chao-Tsung Chang
Hungkuang University
Department of Industrial Safety & Health
No. 34, Chung-Chie Rd. Sha Lu, Tai Chung 433, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Abstract This study presents a newly designed inverter
circuit for photovoltaic (PV) power generation systems. A
controllable current source supplies the filter capacitors and
loads with high frequency switching to integrate the output
sine wave voltage. Since the resonant inductor and the filter
capacitor are connected in parallel, the series diodes of the
full-bridge switches can be omitted. Furthermore, a
coupled-inductor with a low volume is utilized to reduce the
circulating energy and clamped the voltage stress of the
devices, regardless of whether operation is in continuous
conduction mode. The experimental waveforms are provided
to demonstrate the soft-switching properties of all the devices.
Additionally, a normal rated power with 110V-1kW-60Hz,
which can be operated at stand-alone and grid-connected
modes, is provided to show the effectiveness of the output
voltage with low distortion, fast dynamic regulating speed and
insensitivity to load variation, even under nonlinear loads.
Experimental results that the maximum power inverter
efficiency exceeds 97%, and the total harmonic distortion for
various load conditions falls within 2%.
I. INTRODUCTION
A conventional PWM voltage-source inverter with LC
filter circuit is probably the most important power converter
topology [1]-[3], and is used in many particular industrial
and commercial applications, such as: uninterruptible power
system (UPS) for telecommunication systems, computer
sets, hospital equipments and ac motor drivers. However, the
instantaneous average output voltage is always lower than
the input dc-bus voltage, and the output current needs to pass
through a filter inductor. Hence, an inductor with a higher
inductance increases the product’s weight and severe copper
loss. Additionally, the output waveform tends to distort
around the peak turning point and generates high-frequency
harmonics. The output inductor also cumbers the adjustable
ability of the voltage-source inverter while the situation of
suddenly loading or supporting nonlinear loads occurs. The
current-source inverting methodology has mainly been used
to charge the output capacitor to accumulate pure sine
waveform so that it can lower the high-frequency harmonics
and solve the problem of EMI. However, the inductor
current and switch voltage stress are difficult to handle due
to the utilization of a large inductor in this circuit. To protect
the switch devices, either a high-voltage-rated device or a
snubber circuit is normally applied to deplete the leakage
energy. However, it will degrade the corresponding power
conversion efficiency. Voltage-clamped and soft-switching
techniques are commonly used in high-efficiency inverters
[4]-[7]. Ishikawa and Murai [4] proposed a new
series-resonant dc-link inverter with a voltage-clamped
circuit to provide soft-switching characteristics and restrain
the voltage stress across switch below four times that of the
dc-bus voltage. Itoh et al. [5] presented a novel soft-switched
current-source inverter for single-phase utility interfaces to
achieve the soft-switching capability. Unfortunately, their
inverter requires a bulky inductor for the operation of variant
switching frequency, and adopts a large output capacitor to
lower the total harmonic distortion (THD). Moreover, Wai
and Duan [8] developed a new current-source sinusoidal
voltage inverter with a smaller inductor and compressed the
voltage stress across switches about double that of the
dc-bus voltage. However, the secondary winding of the
coupled inductor has a high circulating current which feeds
back to the input dc bus; the inductor current should be
controlled in the discontinuous conduction mode (DCM).
Therefore, the efficiency improvement is limited to light
loads. In addition, the switching frequency is typically
increased to minimize the size and weight of the
current-source inverter. However, increasing the frequency
leads to substantial switching losses and deteriorates overall
system efficiency. Hence, the study employs a
current-source inverter [9] designed by the voltage-clamped
and soft-switching techniques to provide output voltage
possessing a high conversion efficiency with a reduced THD
value. The voltage ratings of the switches are comparatively
lower than the ones in [4] [8] so that it will result in smaller
conduction losses, while the corresponding switching losses
are also diminished via the soft-switching technique.
However, these topologies [8] [9] are required six switches
and their two clamping switches in series have more
conduction loss to decrease the conversion efficiency under
the heavy load.
In order to reduce the conduction loss further, this
investigation proposed a new sine-wave voltage inverter; it
only adopted five switches, designed by the high switching
frequency and low switching voltage techniques giving the
output voltage possessing higher conversion efficiency than
the ones in [8][9] with six switches. The rest of this paper is
organized as follows. Section II shows the inverter analyses.
Section III is design consideration. Section IV presents
experimental results for a 110V-1kW-60Hz output power
with a 70k Hz switching frequency that is provided to
validate the effectiveness of the proposed power conversion
system. Conclusions are finally drawn in Section V.

978-1-4244-1718-6/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE Pg 557

 II. INVERTER ANALYSES Ta + and Tb− are turned on (i.e., the switches Tb+ and Ta − are
Figure 1 depicts the system configuration of the proposed turned off) in the positive half-cycle of the output voltage
sine-wave voltage inverter topology, which is made up of a ( vO ). During this interval, the resonant inductor current ( i LO )
high frequency circuit, a coupled circuit, a bridge circuit, a charges to the capacitor ( CO ), since the inductance current
stand-alone circuit and a grid-connected circuit. The high
phase lags its voltage ( vO ) by 90o. For simplicity with
frequency circuit consists of a switch TM and diodes
mathematic analysis, the relationship assumes 100%
( DC , DE ). The switch TM is conducted the current i IN from
magnetic coupling between the primary and secondary. In
input side to the coupled circuit at a high frequency control, actual cases, there will be some leakage reactance, which
and its across voltage is clamped by the diodes ( DC , DE ). will create additional voltage stress on the switch. This
The coupled circuit includes a diode D f and a drawback will be overcome in the following operation.
Moreover, we shall make the theoretical assumptions that
coupled-inductor Tr 1 , in which the symbols Ld and
the switching elements are ideal, with zero ON voltage drop
L f denote the primary and secondary magnetizing and zero OFF state leakage. Fig. 2 sketches the key
inductance of the coupled-inductor. The additional object of waveforms during various operation modes, and the
this inductor Ld can be used to limit the charge current, and operational modes in one switching cycle are depicted in
the ascendant rate of the inductor current is proportional to Fig. 3. The detailed operation analyzes are discussed as
its across voltage. The coupled windings together act as a follows.
switch similar to a magnetic switch, such that the
secondary-side inductor current i Lf is conducted when the vgM vgM vgM
switch ( TM ) is turned off. Moreover, the bridge circuit is iLd
composed of diagonally opposite switches ( Ta + , Tb− ) and iLf iLd iLf iLd
( Tb+ , Ta − ) from two leg, inverting the charge current ( i Ld ) to VIN
ac side at a 60Hz below 50% duty signal trigger. The vTM
stand-alone circuit is made up of a filter capacitor CO and a iTM iTM vTM iTM
resonant inductor LO . The output voltage vO parallel VIN
vDC iDC
connected to the filter capacitor CO is served the electric vDC vDC
iDC
equipment with a smooth sinusoidal wave form such as UPS
when the utility power lines are failing. Significantly, the VIN
vDf
addition resonant inductor LO changes the filter capacitor vDf vDf
iDf iDf
voltage vO in the zero-across voltage region by a resonant
t0 t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t0
fashion to avoid the short circuit problem from the capacitor Mode 4
through the inverter switches or their body diodes. The Mode 1 Mode 2 Mode 3
Mode 6
Mode 5 Mode 1
function of grid-connected circuit is to transfer the PV
energy to the utility power via the inductor LU .
vO iLO

iLO vO
DE iLd VIN , iIN
Logic Control &
Driving Circuit vU , iU ia + , ib −
vo
i IN
Ld Ta + Tb + va + , vb −
TM All switches

+
io LU iU
Tr1 vU
VIN CO LO vo
Utility Line
v ga + , v gb − v ga − , v gb +
iLf
Lf
DC
Ta − Tb −
Fig. 2. Key waveforms during various operation modes.
Df

Mode 1 [t0−t1] [Fig.3 (a)]

DC Source
High Frequency Coupled
Bridge Circuit
Stand-Alone
Circuit
Grid-Connected
Circuit
The beginning of mode 1 is when the current i f drops to
Circuit Circuit

Fig. 1. Circuit diagram of the proposed sine-wave voltage inverter

zero. In this mode, the switches ( TM , Ta+ , Tb− ) are turned on
for one span and all diodes ( DC , DE , D f ) are also off. The
Due to the symmetry of the inverter, the concept of the primary winding voltage vLd of the coupled-inductor Tr1
inverter operation is briefly expressed when the switches can be described as

Pg 558
 DE DE

Ld Ta + Tb +
+ Ld Ta + Tb +
TM TM
+ +
+
+ Lk + Lk

VIN vo CO LO VIN vo CO LO
+ +

Lf Lf
+
DC DC
+ Ta − Tb − + Ta − Tb −
Df Df

(a) Mode 1 (b) Mode 2

DE DE
+ +
Ld Ta + Tb + + Ld Ta + Tb +
TM TM

+ Lk + Lk

VIN vo CO LO VIN vo CO LO
+ +
+ +
Lf + Lf
DC DC
Ta − Tb − Ta − Tb −
+
Df Df

(c) Mode 3 (d) Mode 4

DE DE
+
Ld Ta + Tb + Ld Ta + Tb +
TM TM
+
+ +
Lk + Lk

VIN vo CO LO VIN vo CO LO
+ + +

+ Lf Lf
DC DC
Ta − Tb − + Ta − Tb −
+
Df Df

(e) Mode 5 (f) Mode 6

Fig. 3. Topological modes: (a) Mode 1 [t0−t1]; (b) Mode 2 [t1−t2]; (c) Mode 3[t2−t3]; (d) Mode 4 [t3−t4];(e) Mode 5 [t4−t5]; (f) Mode 6 [t5−t0]

Ld ⋅ di Ld / dt = v Ld = VIN − vO (1) inductor Lk energy of the coupled-inductor requires to

where VIN and vO denote the voltages of the dc source and release. This voltage vTM will force the reverse parasitic
the ac side. During this stage, a rising current ( i Ld ) flows voltage ( v DC ) of the diode DC to decay to zero gradually.
from the dc source through the switch TM and the inductor The switch TM and the diode DC , they also have voltage
Ld to charge the filter capacitor CO via switches Ta + and clamped characteristics since the voltage summation of the
switch TM and the diode DC is equal to the dc source and is
Tb− . Thus, the output voltage vO is determined as
given by
1
vo =
CO ∫
(i Ld + i LO − iO ) ⋅ dt (2) vTM + v DC = VIN (3)

where the i LO and iO respectively denote the currents of the
resonant inductor ( LO ) and output load in the stand-alone
circuit.
Mode 2 [t1−t2] [Fig.3 (b)]
When the switch TM is turned off, the current i Ld starts to
charge the parasitic capacitor of the switch since the leakage
Mode 3 [t2−t3] [Fig.3 (c)]
At the start of this mode, the diode DC becomes
forward-biased and turns on for the current i Ld . According
to (3), the maximum sustainable voltage of the switch TM
and the diode DC are equal to the dc side voltage VIN .
Moreover, the polarities of both sides of the

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coupled-inductor are reversed, thus the diode D f conducts
by the current i Lf through it. According to the conservation
law of magnetic energy, the relation between the current i Ld
and i Lf can be represented as
2 2
iLdM = iLd + iLf2 ( L f / Ld ) (4)
where i LdM represent the maximum current of the inductor
current i Ld . During this period, the currents i Lf and i Ld are
respectively increasing and decreasing. When they have the
same amplitude, ends this mode.
Mode 4 [t3−t4] [Fig.3 (d)]
At time t= t 3 , both windings Ld and L f are connected in
series to release the magnetic energy. Immediately, the
secondary current i Ld provides the reverse recovery current
for the diode DC to build its reverse-biased voltage v DC .
This voltage v DC will force the switch voltage vTM to decay
gradually. The voltage vTM will be clamped as
vTM = VIN − vO N /(1 + N ) (5)
where N is the turns ratio and equal to N 2 / N1 .The
symbols N1 , N 2 are the winding turns in the primary and
secondary sides, respectively. When the voltage vTM stops
to decay, both currents i Ld and i Lf have the characteristics
with the same amplitude and can be written as
i Ld = iLf = i Ld2 /(1 + N ) 2 (6)
Mode 5 [t4−t5] [Fig.3(e)]
This mode is beginning when the switch TM turns on
again. Because the voltage vTM lowers than the dc source
voltage VIN via (5), that is helpful to decrease the switching
loss from its store energy of the parasitic capacitor and is
given as
1 500V. 3) The coupled-inductor parameters were designed as
wTM = ⋅ CTM ⋅ vTM
2
(7)
2 Ld = 300uH , L f = 150uH and k = 0.98 with EE-55 core.
where CTM and wTM are respectively the parasitic capacitor
of the switch TM and its store energy at a vTM voltage. At
time t = t 4 , the currents i Ld and i Lf maintain the previous
path to charge the filter capacitor CO . These currents depend
on each other because the raising rate of the primary current
i Ld is restricted by the primary-side leakage inductor, and
the secondary current i Lf requires time to decay to zero.
Because the switch TM can not derive any current from the
coupled-inductor so that it is turned on under ZCS property
regardless of whether the operation of primary winding
current i Ld is in continuous conduction mode.
Mode 6 [t5−t0] [Fig.3 (f)]
At time t= t 5 , the switch current iTM is equal to the
primary side current, the diode D f becomes revise-biased
and its across voltage can be calculated as
v Df = VIN + N (VIN − vo ) (8)
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When the diode D f turns off, it begins the next switching
cycle and repeats the operation in mode 1.
III. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
To verify the validity and the related operation principles,
the switching frequency of the switch TM is design at 70
kHz, which is a higher switching frequency than the
traditional sine-wave voltage converter, to demonstrate the
merits with low switching loss and THD. The dc source
consists ten PV modules which are connected in series to
obtain 170V-220V dc voltage and 1kW power capacity.
Moreover, the four bridge switches with low switching
frequency, are triggered in accordance with the phase of the
output voltage vO . When the voltage vO higher than dc side
voltage, the diode DE will to be conducted to clamp the
voltage of the bridge switches as the dc source. Due to the
diodes DC and DE are designed via (3), the maximum
blocking voltage across all switches are similar to the dc side,
a 250V MOSFET has sufficient safety margins with much
less RDS −on than does a 400V MOSFET in [8]. In order to
minimum the ripple voltage for the output load, a 4 uF filter
capacitor is adopted to limit the ripple voltage with in 1% at
1kW output power. Because the resonant frequency of the
filter capacitor and the resonant inductor is equal to 60Hz of
the utility power, the inductor LO has been selected
1.76H-18VAR. The magnetic steel material is used for the
inductor LO with small value since that is only operated in
low frequency. Additionally, the hardware specifications are
described in detail as follows. 1) The switching frequency
was set to 70k Hz, and the resonant frequency was designed
as 60Hz. 2) All switch devices were MOSFET
IRFP264N-250V-60 mΩ -44A, the diodes ( DC , DE ) were
SFA1605G 300V and the other diode ( D f ) was SFA1607G
4) The capacitor was chosen as CO =4uF. 5) The inductors
( LO , LU ) were selected as 1.76H-18VAR and 500 uH ,
respectively.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Figure 4 depict the experimental results of output voltage,
output current and spectrum waveforms of the proposed
high-efficiency power conversion system under different
loads, where Figs. 4(a)-(e) are measured at the stand-alone
circuit and the injection 1kW power into the utility line is
shown in Fig. 4(f). Fig. 4(a) displays the output voltage vO
and the inductor current i waveform without load. The
Ld
average value of the current i seems very small due to the
Ld
switching loss has been much reduced and the energy of the
filter capacitor CO has been directly changed from the
resonant inductor LO for natural resonating. In additional,
Figs. 4(b)-(e) show the output voltage and current
waveforms under full load, inductance load, nonlinear load
and step load, respectively. Theses figures demonstrate the output voltage so that the switching losses by the four
effectiveness of the output voltage with small ripple switches in the bridge circuit can be efficaciously reduced.
waveform, fast dynamic regulating speed and insensitivity Moreover, the switch Ta + will sustain the output voltage
to load variation, even under nonlinear load. Fig. 4 depict the with a peak 156V at most, when the switch is turned off
proposed inverter that is also suitable for grid-connected during the negative half period of the output voltage vO .
power system. Due to the output voltage vO with pure
When the switch Ta + is turned on, the switch current i a+ is
sine-wave voltage, the PV power can be delivered to the
utility power via the inductor LU when the phase and composed of both currents ( i Ld , i Lf ) such that it exhibits
amplitude of the voltage vO are respectively linearly leading almost continuous triangle waveform for supporting the
output load with a low ripple voltage. As can been from Fig.
and large than the utility voltage vU . As can be seen from 5(d)-(f), the across voltage of the diodes ( DC , D f ) are
Fig.4, the output voltages of the proposed power conversion
limited and the reverse-recovery currents can be alleviated
system can be almost maintained at the sinusoidal waveform
effectively. Fig. 5(h) shows the resonant inductor current
and the high-order harmonic components can be
significantly lowered. Moreover, the measured THD values very small so that the real total loss of the inductor LO is
for four different load conditions are less than 2%, which is only equal to 2.5 Watt. The waveforms as shown in Figs. 4
allowed for a general standard (e.g., IEEE Std. 1547) of and 5, the proposed inverter agrees with the analyses in
limiting the THD values of the produce power in terms of section II and III, and provides a suitable ac power
voltage and current inside 5 %. condition.

(50V/div) (50V/div)
(5ms/div) (50V/div) (5ms/div) (50V/div)
vo vo
io
0 iLd 0
vTM
0V
(0.5A/div) (10A/div)
(100 Hz/div) THD=1.33% (100 Hz/div) THD=1.44% (2us/div) 0V vTM (2ms/div)
40.569dB 40.365dB
-2dB -2dB -8dB 0dB -4dB -2dB -2dB

iTM
0dB 0dB

0A (10A/div) 0A iTM (10A/div)

(20dB/div) (20dB/div)
(a) (b) (a) (b)
(50V/div) (100V/div)
(5ms/div) (50V/div) (5ms/div) (50V/div)
vo vo
io
v a+
0 0
io vDf
(2A/div) (10A/div)
(100 Hz/div) THD=1.39% (100 Hz/div) THD=1.65% 0V
(2ms/div) 0V
(2us/div)
40.885dB 40.729dB
0dB 0dB -4dB 1dB 0dB 0dB
ia + iDf
0dB 0dB

0A (10A/div) 0A (10A/div)
(20dB/div) (20dB/div)
(c) (d) (c) (d)
(50V/div) (50V/div)
(10ms/div) (5ms/div) (50V/div)

vU v DC
0

iU
(5ms/div) (50V/div) 0V
(2us/div) 0V v DC (2ms/div)

vo vo 0

iDC
io io
0
0A (10A/div) 0A iDC (10A/div)
(5A/div) (10A/div)
(e) (f)
(e) (f)
(5A/div) (50V/div)
Fig. 4. Experimental results of output current, output voltage and spectrum
waveforms under different loads. (a) v and iLd under No load. (b) v and
O O vo
io under 1kW load. (c) RL load (R = 50Ω and L =50mH ) (d) Rectifier with
RC load (R = 100Ω, C = 470uF ). (e) v and iLd under step load (step iLd
O (2us/div) 0 iLo
change from 300W to 950W). (f) vU and iU under 1kW injection load. 0A

iLf
Figure 5 illustrate the experimental voltage and current (5ms/div)
curves of the switches and diodes at 170V input dc voltage 0A

(g)
(5A/div)
(h)
(0.5A/div)

and 1kW output power. From Fig. 5(a) and (b), the switch
Fig. 5. Experimental waveforms.; (a) vTM and iTM (2us/div); (b) vTM and
voltage vTM is clamped close to the dc side voltage at 170V,
iTM (2ms/div); (c) va + and ia− ; (d) v Df and iDf ; (e) v DC and iDC (2us/div);
and is turned on with the ZCS propriety. By observing Fig.
(f) v DC and iDC (2ms/div);(g) iLd and iLf ; (h) vo and iLO .
5(c), the switch Ta + is operated at the same frequency of the

Pg 561
 Figure 6 depicts the measured efficiency of the proposed
inverter and the current source inverters in [8] [9] with 110V
and 60Hz as functions of output power. In Fig. 6, the related
semiconductor profit factors of proposed inverter is 1.8%
(IRFP264N-250V×5), and the factors of the study in [8] [9]
are 0.6% (IRFP360-400V×6) and 1.5% (IRFP260N-200V×6)
respectively, where the definition of the semiconductor
profit factor is the rate between the inverter maximum output
power versus total semiconductor sizing power. From this
comparison, the proposed inverter indeed yields superior
conversion efficiency over both the current-source inverters
under the lowered semiconductor profit factors. Moreover,
at light load, the efficiency improvement is more than 8% in
[8] since the coupled-inductor has been much reduced the
component of the circuiting current.
Proposed converter
Inverter efficiency %
[2] F. S. Kang, S.J. Park, S. E. Cho, C. U. Kim and T. Ise, “Multilevel
PWM inverters suitable for the use of stand-alone photovoltaic power
systems,” IEEE Energy Convers., vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 906-915, 2005.
[3] M. Mezaroba, D. C. Martins, and I. Barbi, “A ZVS PWM Inverter With
Active Voltage Clamping Using the Reverse Recovery Energy of the
Diodes,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. (I): Regular Papers, vol. 52, no. 10,
pp. 2219-2226, 2005.
[4] H. Ishikawa and Y. Murai, “A novel soft-switched PWM current
source inverter with voltage clamped circuit,” IEEE Trans. Power
Electron., vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 10811087, 2000.
[5] R. Itoh, K. Ishizaka, H. Oishi, and H. Okada, “Soft-switched
current-source inverter for single-phase utility interfaces,” Electron.
Lett., vol. 37, pp. 12081209, 2001.
[6] S. Chen, and T. A. Lipo, “A novel soft-switched PWM inverter for AC
motor drivers,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 11, pp. 653659,
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[7] R. González, J. López, P. Sanchis, and L. Marroyo, “Transformerless
inverter for single-phase photovoltaic systems,” IEEE Trans. Power
Electron., vol. 22, no. 2 pp. 693697, 2007.
[8] R. J. Wai and R. Y Duan, “High-efficiency power conversion for low
power fuel cell generation system,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol.
20, no. 4, pp. 847856, 2005.
[9] R. Y. Duan, C. T. Chang, and T. L. Su, “A novel current-source sine
wave voltage inverter with soft-switching and low-switching stress,”
IEEE Power Electron. Spec. Conf., 2006, pp. 551556.

Inverter in [8] Inverter in [9]

Output power (w)

Fig. 6. Efficiency comparison of the proposed inverter and the current
source inverters in [8] [9].

V. CONCLUSIONS
This study has developed a high-efficiency inverter for
stand-alone and grid-connected systems. This inverter,
which adopts a resonant inductor with small volume, can
operate by soft-switching without high voltage and current
stress. Because the circulating current has been substantially
decreased and the high switching frequency is applied well,
the volumes of the coupled-inductor and the filter capacitor
in the proposed inverter are smaller than those in the
inverters presented in [8] [9]. Furthermore, the maximum
efficiency of the power conversion was over 97% and the
total harmonic distortions for various load conditions were
all within 2%. Consequently, the proposed power inverter
performs well with a small device capacity, low voltage
stress and high efficiency for power conversion applications.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors acknowledge the financial support of the
National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C. through grant
number NSC 96-2221-E-241-015.

REFERENCES
[1] H. Deng; R. Oruganti and D. Srinivasan, “PWM methods to handle
time delay in digital control of a UPS inverter,” IEEE Power Electron.
Letters, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1-6, 2005.

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