IMPLEMENTATION OF CONVERTER TECHNIQUES FOR EFFECTIVE OPERATION OF AN ELECTRICAL GRID

There is a critical need to make use of renewable energy sources such as solar energy to develop efficient and economical solutions to the energy crisis that many countries are facing. This need is worsened in developing countries by the presence of weak or unreliable electrical grids. A popular solution is the use of solar based single phase micro-inverters feeding AC power to the grid. However, they require a stable grid and input current pulsation at twice the line frequency is an inherent disadvantage. This limitation is typically remedied by a large electrolytic input capacitor that increases the cost and reduces the efficiency of the converter. This paper therefore proposes a dual mode fly back based hybrid converter that can support both a grid tied mode and islanded mode operation to extract maximum power from the solar PV source at all times.