PV- Virtual Bus Topology with Series Capacitor for DPP Converters

This paper proposes a new topology for differential power processing converters. It has been reported recently that the power losses in a PV array with differential power processing converters can be reduced further with a series capacitor connected with each PV string. The capacitor compensates for the imbalance between the MPP voltages of the connected PV strings. While effective, the additional capacitor increases the number of the needed DPP converters where an extra PV-PV converter is required. This paper explores the series connected capacitor configuration with the PV-virtual Bus topology. As opposed to the PV-PV configuration, it is shown that the PV-Bus topology does not increase the number of converters when adding the series capacitor without compromising the accuracy or the efficiency. A complete analysis and simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the employed topology.