A three-phase solar power conditioner using a single-phase PWM control method

Abstract

This paper presents the operating performance of a three-phase solar power conditioner using a single-phase pulsewidth modulation (PWM) method. The proposed modulation method turns on or off only one of the three phase legs in one PWM-carrier period. The proposed method enables to reduce the average switching frequency by a factor of three, and thus it has a switching power loss four times smaller than a conventional three-phase PWM method does. Experimental results obtained by using a 4-kW, 200-V setup are shown to verify the operating principle and performance. The experimental setup exhibits a high efficiency of 98% and an acceptable total harmonic distortion (THD) as low as 4.1%. © 2010 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.