Proceedings of the
Second International Energy 2030 Conference,
November 4-5, 2008, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.
An Improved Power Converter for ADNOC Solar Power Supply
Abdul Rahiman Beig
The Petroleum Institute, UAE
Majid Postan
The Petroleum Institute, UAE
Abstract
Solar energy is a non-conventional source of energy; it is environment friendly and available
abundantly. Power converter circuits are required to convert the solar energy from available form (dc) to
the required form (normally ac). At present the cost of solar power is too high, hence the power converters
should be highly efficient, reliable and cost effective. In this paper, a novel power converter circuit which
has improved efficiency, reliability and low cost over conventional circuits is proposed. The proposed
circuit is based on cascaded H-bridge inverter topology in which higher voltages can be synthesized using
devices of lower voltage rating. A 15-level cascaded H-Bridge inverter configuration is used. This results
in sinusoidal output voltages with very low THD with the devices switching at fundamental frequency.
The low switching frequency results in reduced switching losses, simple power and gate circuit.
MOSFETs with low on state resistance help in keeping the conduction loss at low levels.
