Bidirectional Clamping-Based H5, HERIC, and H6 Transformerless Inverter Topologies With Reactive Power Capability

Transformerless inverters (TLIs) are competently accepted for photovoltaic (PV) applications because of their high efficiency, reduced size, and lower cost. But in the absence of a transformer, there exists a galvanic connection between the PV array to ground and it results in the flow of hazardous leakage current. Several TLI topologies have been proposed in the literature with decoupling circuits to reduce the leakage current. Among those H5, Heric, and H6 topologies are the most popular and widely accepted TLIs. Nevertheless, the effect of switch junction capacitances was not considered in the common-mode voltage analysis, which inevitably causes excess leakage current. Also, reactive power capability cannot be accomplished with traditional pulsewidth modulation (PWM) schemes due to the absence of a bidirectional current path during the freewheeling period. Therefore, in this article, a bidirectional clamping (BDC) based H5, Heric, and H6 TLI topologies are proposed with improved PWM schemes. BDC branch reduces the leakage current by clamping the inverter terminal voltages to half of the dc-link voltage during the freewheeling period and the improved PWM schemes ensure the bidirectional current path while operating in negative power region. The performance of both traditional and proposed topologies is tested with MATLAB simulations and further justified with experimental results.