Review and comparative study of single-stage inverters for a PV system

Energy from the sun is harnessed through a photovoltaic (PV) array in form of DC. This available DC voltage is converted into AC for industrial or domestic use as per the requirement. In some topologies the extracted DC voltage is stepped up to a higher level of DC using a boost or a buck-boost converter and then this stepped up DC voltage is converted into AC by the use of an inverter. However this process is pretty costly because of the larger number of components employed. An efficient alternative to this two-stage approach is the Single-Stage Inverter (SSI). SSI does the boosting of DC and inversion of the DC to AC using only a single circuit and hence the name Single-Stage Boost Inverter. SSBI give us the advantage of reduced and robust circuitry along with reliability and efficiency. This paper presents a review of the various (however not all) SSI topologies in PV systems.