Operating principles and practical design aspects of all SiC DC/AC/DC converter for MPPT in grid-connected PV supplies

•Alternative high frequency (HF) link photovoltaic MPPT converter with galvanic isolation.•Possibility of using a simple, two-level inverter for grid connection, owing to reduced common-mode currents.•All silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductor based MPPT converter with a high efficiency and high power density.•Application of the HF link MPPT converter based on all SiC power semiconductors to a photovoltaic carport. A 20 kW, 20 kHz high frequency (HF) link maximum power point tracking (MPPT) converter for a grid-connected PV supply, based on all silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors, is presented. In the developed converter, SiC power MOSFETs are used in the low-voltage PV panel side and SiC Schottky diodes on the high-voltage DC output, in order to maximize the power conversion efficiency and the power density. Operating principles of the resulting dual H-bridge MPPT converter and the practical aspects of the converter design and its circuit layout, are described in detail. The implemented converter performance is compared with that of a classical Si-IGBT and hybrid-IGBT based MPPT converter in terms of efficiency. This configuration can compete with the non-isolated MPPT converter topologies, such as the boost converter commonly used in grid-connected PV systems, since it allows the possibility of using a conventional two-level, three-phase grid-connected inverter. This is due to the enhanced common-mode EMI performance as compared to non-isolated MPPT topologies, resulting in a competitive high efficiency PV converter design with galvanic isolation. It has been shown that the converter size can be shrinked up to a power density of 1.6 kW/lt, with a DC-DC converter full-load efficiency of 98%. The resulting compact and highly efficient SiC power MOSFET based HF link MPPT converter is suggested to be a part of grid-connected, multi-string PV supplies with simple inverter topologies in the future.