A Phase-Shifting MPPT to Mitigate Interharmonics from Cascaded H-Bridge PV Inverters

Interharmonic is an emerging issue in photovoltaic (PV) systems. It has been revealed in previous studies that the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control is one potential source for interharmonics. In cascaded H-bridge (CHB) PV inverters, if the MPPT perturbations of the CHB cells are in-phase, the sum of the voltages of all CHB cells will oscillate with a higher amplitude, leading to an amplification of interharmonics delivered to the grid. To address this issue, a phase-shifting MPPT (PS-MPPT) method for interharmonic mitigation is proposed in this paper. By properly shifting the phase-angle of the MPPT perturbation of each CHB cell, the oscillation of the equivalent total dc voltage can be effectively mitigated, and in turn, the interharmonics can be suppressed to a large extent. The proposed PS-MPPT scheme has been demonstrated on CHB PV inverters through simulations and experimens. The implementation for generalized n-cell CHB PV inverters has further been discussed. Moreover, a hybrid PS-MPPT method is also developed to improve the interharmonic mitigation performance. Simulation and experimental results have validated the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of interharmonic suppression.