Reconfigurable Solar Converter for PV Battery Application

A photovoltaic system is an arrangement of components designed to supply usable electric power using the sun as the power source. PV systems have many advantages like it provide clean energy, it can be made available almost anywhere there is sunlight, the operating and maintenance costs for PV panels are considered to be low. The conventionally used converters in solar systems have many disadvantages such as multiple conversion stages, complex control, less efficient, high cost, bulky, etc. A new converter, for photovoltaic battery applications, called Reconfigurable Solar Converter (RSC), uses only single-stage three phase grid-tie solar PV converter to perform dc/ac and dc/dc operations, overcomes the drawback of conventional converters. The RSC concept is based on energy storage integration for utility-scale solar PV systems and it provides a minimal overlap between the PV energy storage and energy release time. In this paper a RSC which uses minimum number of conversion stages which in turn improves the efficiency and reduces the cost, weight and volume has been realized.