Reconfigurable Solar Converter: A Single-Stage Power Conversion PV-Battery System

Abstract

This paper introduces a new converter called reconfigurable solar converter (RSC) for photovoltaic (PV)-battery application, particularly utility-scale PV-battery application. The main concept of the new converter is to use a single-stage three-phase grid-tie solar PV converter to perform dc/ac and dc/dc operations. This converter solution is appealing for PV-battery application, because it minimizes the number of conversion stages, thereby improving efficiency and reducing cost, weight, and volume. In this paper, a combination of analysis and experimental tests is used to demonstrate the attractive performance characteristics of the proposed RSC.