High efficient high density multilevel packed u-cell power electronics converter for renewable energy conversion

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Growing electric power demand in the world requires necessarily more harvesting of renewable energy (PV and Wind) resources into the existing grid. Each PV or wind farm should necessarily make use of power electronics inverters to convert the available DC current into a fixed-frequency fixed- AC voltage magnitude usable by the consumers.Standard technology such as full-bridge two-level converters are the main players in the market which have being continuously analyzed and investigated for any possible improvements in various aspects such as conversion efficiency, power losses, power quality and manufacturing costs. High harmonic content of output voltage still a matter of limitation along with bulky filter.Nowadays, using more power switches in power electronic converters called 'multilevel converters' is a competitive technology which leads to produce more voltage levels at the output and consequently lower harmonics, smaller size of the output filters, more compact, package size, and lower manufacturing cost. Such multilevel topologies generate low harmonic waveforms; therefore they are most suitable for energy conversion to deliver efficient power to the loads from renewable energy resources like photovoltaic systems. A new technology, which permit to overcome the above-mentioned issues, named Packed U-Cell (PUC) converter structure has been invented by Al-Haddad in 2011. This new topology of multilevel converter which has high power density capability, light weight along with the self-balancing characteristics will be developed and tested for solar conversion application and for interfacing multiple DC sources to connect smart power converter in the box with interfacing ac sources or in stand alone operation at high power density reaching. The project target 3 kW boards with intelligent plug and play parallelizing capability will be developed, and integrated in high power density 250 Watts per cubic inches using the new technology of GaN power devices operating at 200 kHz. The board will harvest solar power at an efficiency of 96%