A Comparison of Quasi-Z-Source Inverter and Traditional Two-Stage Inverter for Photovoltaic Application

This paper presents a comparison between the newly proposed quasi-Z-source inverter (qZSI) and the traditional two-stage inverter for Photovoltaic (PV) applications. The comparison is conducted in light of the voltage stress on the IGBT switches, the transient and steady state responses, the voltage Third Harmonic Distortion (THD), and the inverter efficiency. The modeling and the control design are firstly discussed and the experimental investigations are conducted in order to validate the theoretical basis. The results show that the performance of the single-stage qZSI is comparable with the two-stage inverter under the same operating conditions but with a lower THD and higher efficiency.