CASCADED MULTILEVEL INVERTER AND METHOD FOR OPERATING PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS AT A MAXIMUM POWER POINT

A method of operating a cascaded multilevel inverter of photovoltaic system to transfer electrical power from a plurality of photovoltaic cells onto an electrical power distribution grid. Power switches in the inverter are operated in a manner effective to combine a block voltage output from each selected photovoltaic blocks series-wise to output an inverter voltage substantially equal to the grid voltage. A selected photovoltaic block may be pulse width modulated to incrementally adjust a current or voltage output by the system. The photovoltaic blocks selected to contribute to the current or voltage output by the system are selected based on a desire to operate solar panels formed by the photovoltaic cells at a maximum power point (MPP) of each solar panel in a photovoltaic block. Shuffling of which blocks are selected may occur at any time during synthesizing a sinusoidal output signal.