Gamma Z Source Multilevel Inverter for Photovoltaic Systems

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are in trend due to the enormous development in the field of Power Electronics and PV panel manufacturing technology. There are many topologies of inverter proposed, to operate the PV panel more efficiently and extract the available power from the sun. Gamma Z Source Inverter and Multilevel inverter are two separate families of inverters which are tradionally used for PV systems due to their advantages. In this paper we have carefully combined both the inverters without loosing the advantages of both the inverters. The modulation ratio of the proposed inverter is high, which thereby increases the voltage gain, and reduce voltage stress on the switches. An Enhanced Pulse Width Modulation Technique is adopted to control the switches, which is integrated to a Perturb and Observe based MPPT module. Both simulation and experimental verification of the proposed system was done and the results are found to be satisfactory.