A Gallium Nitride switched-capacitor power inverter for photovoltaic applications

A Gallium Nitride (GaN) based switched-capacitor module integrated inverter (MII) is presented in this paper. This two stage solution first employs a dc/dc quadrupler that utilizes an interleaving charging scheme. This strategy not only reduces the high frequency current ripple subjected to the photovoltaic panel, but also decreases the voltage ripple on the DC link between the two stages. The second stage is a five-level boost inverter that is responsible for both maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and minimizing reactive power flow. Both stages utilize a resonant soft-switching scheme in the capacitor charging current loops to increase the MII's efficiency. Basic theoretical analysis and experimental results for the individual stages are included.