A magnetic-linked multilevel active neutral point clamped converter with an advanced switching technique for grid integration of solar photovoltaic systems

© 1972-2012 IEEE. Nowadays, the grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) system has been drawing significant attention due to the rapid development and the decreasing cost of solar panels. The efficiency and reliability of a grid-connected PV system mainly depend on the power conversion system and the control strategy. This article presents a new magnetic-linked 7-level active neutral point clamped (ANPC) converter, which requires less number of flying capacitors and also reduces the control complexity of the grid-connected PV system. The proposed converter topology utilizes the input dc bus voltage better than the traditional ANPC multilevel converter and also provides galvanic isolation to the grid-connected PV systems. The lack of galvanic isolation is one of the biggest problems faced by the power frequency transformerless grid-connected PV systems. The proposed magnetic-linked power converter is also validated through simulations in MATLAB/Simulink and through tests in a laboratory test platform.