A GaN-Based Active Power Decoupling Approach for Enhancing the Efficiency and Reliability of Residential PV Microinverters

It is a common sense that, the reliability of a system is dictated by the life-time of its weakest component. In terms of a single-phase solar photovoltaic (PV) system, including PV panel and the microinverter, the reliability of the system is confined by the electrolytic dc-link capacitor at the input of its microinverter. To enhance the reliability of the system by providing the possibility of employing film capacitors, with higher life-time rather than their electrolytic counterparts, this paper presents a novel modeling, design, and control of a PV-side active power decoupling (APD) approach. Besides, GaN FETs are employed to achieve a superior efficiency and power density of the APD. The proposed methodology is verified through a thorough design, loss modeling, and numerical analysis.