Coupled-Inductor-Based Aalborg Inverter with Input DC Energy Regulation

Due to the global environmental issues and energy crisis, the injection of renewable energy sources (RESs) into the power system is continuously increasing. As the interface between RESs and power grid, grid-tied inverters using MOSFET switches, without traditional line frequency transformers, show some potential advantages, in terms of low cost, high efficiency, and lightweight and small size. Among several proposed configurations, the Aalborg inverter was proposed as a new family of high efficiency MOSFET-switch-based hybrid source inverters. For a conventional 'half bridge' type Aalborg inverter, due to the imbalance of two independent dc sources, the input dc energies may not be fully utilized, which may reduce the efficiency of whole system. In order to extract the maximum energy from two independent dc sources, a coupled-inductor-based 'half bridge' type Aalborg inverter is proposed in this paper. The principle of operation is presented and demonstrated through equivalent circuits. The effectiveness of a new energy balancing technique has been validated through simulations and experiments on a 110 V/ 500 W prototype.