Common-ground solar power generation system

This paper presents a common-ground solar power generation (SPG) system, which consists of a solar panel array, a dual-output DC–DC boost converter, and a common-ground DC–AC inverter. The dual-output DC–DC boost converter is used to boost the output voltage of the solar panel array to charge two capacitors and perform maximum power point tracking (MPPT) to maximise the output power of the solar panel array. By using two capacitors as the DC bus and switching four power electronic switches, the common-ground DC–AC inverter can generate both the positive and negative half-cycles of the output voltage. The feature of the proposed common-ground SPG system is that the negative terminal of the solar panel array can be directly connected to the ground of the utility, making the voltage across the parasitic capacitance of the solar panel array and the ground loop zero, thus effectively suppressing the ground leakage current. As a result, the operational safety of the SPG system is improved. This paper also establishes a hardware prototype with a digital signal processor (DSP) chip as the control core for testing. The experimental results confirm the feasibility of the proposed common-ground SPG system.