Smart integrated power circuit technologies for photovoltaic system power conditioning applications

The term Smart Power (SP) refers to integration of power, control, protection and sensing functions into a single package. This paper examines technological issues involved in the development of this technology for application in high reliability photovoltaic (PV) power conditioning systems (PCS). A PV PCS directly impacts the size of the array, balance-of-system costs and the delivered cost of power. As a result, performance and cost improvement of a PV PCS have a significant impact on the ability of a PV system to provide a cheap, efficient, reliable and safe power to users and favorably compete with other sources of electric power. Issues addressed in this paper include what these technologies are; what their potential merits and current technological barriers are; what their potential applications are and how they can accelerate large-scale commercialization of PV power systems; what technology efforts are currently underway in industry; and what steps must be taken in future power conditioning subsystem designs in order to make PV power commercially competitive with the utility power in terms of cost, reliability, safety and user-friendliness. Details of how smart power devices are used and a detailed list of manufacturers and their products are provided. It is found that many efforts are currently underway in both government and private sectors to enhance performance and cost figures of merit of these technologies for space, military, navy, terrestrial and aircraft power system applications. It is hoped that the synergism with other application sectors will be helpful in the development of highly reliable, low, cost, high performance and safe PCS for PV.