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A Single-Phase Inverter System for PV Power Injection and Active Power Filtering With Nonlinear Inductor Consideration
Tsai-Fu Wu, Senior Member, IEEE, Hung-Shou Nien, Chih-Lung Shen, and Tsung-Ming Chen
AbstractThis paper proposes a single-phase two-wire inverter system for photovoltaic (PV) power injection and active power ltering (APF) with nonlinear inductor consideration. The proposed system can fully or partially perform APF, process PV power, eliminate harmonic currents, improve power factor, and take into account the nonlinear effect of its output lter inductor. In the system, even though only the utility current is sensed, both APF and maximum power point tracking features can be still achieved, reducing the number of current sensors and cost signicantly. To prevent output current from exceeding switch ratings, inverter current is properly controlled through a current estimator and a dened limit circle. A self-learning algorithm is also proposed to determine nonlinear inductance, which can increase the accuracy of the estimated current. Simulations and experimental results have veried the feasibility of the proposed PV inverter system and the algorithm. Index TermsCurrent estimator, nonlinear inductor consideration, photovoltaic (PV) power injection, self-learning algorithm, single-phase two-wire (1 2W) inverter system.

I. INTRODUCTION HOTOVOLTAIC (PV) arrays as an alternative energy resource has been becoming feasible due to extensive research and development work being conducted over a wide area [1][7]. Some of the conventional PV power systems are operated in stand-alone mode, which only supplies power to xed loads. Thus, PV power has not been optimally used. Interconnecting a PV system with utility lines has been the current design trend and grid-connection types of PV inverters have been proposed [8], [9]. However, they merely function to provide real power to the utility and xed loads. Owing to more and more electronic products being supplied by switching power systems, harmonic current pollution to utility sources has become more severe than ever. Recently, many researchers have devoted their efforts to developing PV inverters with real power injection and active power ltering (APF) features [10][13].
Paper IPCSD-05-024, presented at the 2004 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition, Anaheim, CA, February 2226, and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS by the Industrial Power Converter Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society. Manuscript submitted for review November 22, 2004 and released for publication March 23, 2005. T.-F. Wu, H.-S. Nien, and T.-M. Chen are with the Power Electronics Applied Research Laboratory (PEARL), Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail: tfwu@ee.ccu.edu.tw). C.-L. Shen is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, NanJeon Institute of Technology, Tainan 737, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail: ee0597@ms14.hinet.net). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIA.2005.851035

However, the developed inverter systems require several current sensors. Moreover, nonlinear effect of the lter inductor has not been taken into account, and capacity of the inverter has not been optimally used. In this paper, a single-phase two-wire (1 2W) inverter system for PV power injection and APF by taking into account nonlinear lter inductor is proposed. The proposed system can fully or partially perform APF, process PV power, eliminate harmonic currents, improve power factor, and take into the account nonlinear effect of the lter inductor. In the system, even though only utility current is sensed, without sensing inverter current and load current, both maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and APF features can still be achieved. Thus, cost and volume can be reduced signicantly, PV arrays can be utilized effectively, and power quality can be improved correspondingly. To prevent output power of the PV inverter from exceeding its capacity, output current of the inverter system is controlled through a current estimator. Accuracy of the current estimator depends greatly on the variation of the lter inductance. Hence, this paper develops a self-learning algorithm to identify the nonlinear effect of the lter inductor to obtain more accurate estimated results. Once inverter current exceeds the switch current ratings, output power of the inverter is correspondingly reduced based on a dened limit circle. As a result, not only can the inverter system be fully used but power quality can still be improved and PV power can be continuously injected to utility lines. In the proposed self-learning algorithm, probability density function (PDF) of Gaussian distribution [14] is introduced as a criterion to judge the estimated inductance so that precise nonlinear inductance can be obtained. In power ow control, the power generated by PV arrays is rstly processed and fed to utility lines and loads, while reactive power or distortion power is provided to improve power quality in the second priority. Section II describes a conguration of the proposed inverter system, and the overall block diagram of the system controller is explained in Section III. In Section IV, derivation of the current command is conducted. Simulated and experimental results are presented in Section V. Finally, this paper is concluded in Section VI. II. CONFIGURATION OF THE INVERTER SYSTEM Recently, interconnecting a PV inverter system with a utility line has been widely adopted to process renewable energy and improve power factor. A PV system with an APF feature is

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Fig. 1. Conguration of the proposed PV inverter system.

the current design trend and it needs to sense load and inverter output current or utility current for achieving harmonics elimination, power-factor improvement, and PV power injection. In general, it has the two major disadvantages of high cost and low utilization of the existing hardware circuits. For decreasing cost and increasing utilization of the circuits, a PV inverter system with only a utility current sensor to achieve the desired functions is proposed in this paper. In this paper, the proposed 1 2W PV inverter system can process PV power, eliminate current harmonics, fully or partially deal with reactive power and distortion power, and take into account the nonlinear effect of the lter inductor. An overall conguration of the PV inverter system is shown in Fig. 1, , PV arrays in which utility voltage , dc-bus voltage and current , and utility current are sensed voltage to accomplish partially or fully APF function and maximum real power injection. The inverter system includes a full-bridge inverterforcontrollingbidirectional powerow,an - dc-bus lter for ltering ac components with double line frequency on the dc side, a lter inductor , and a system controller. The system controller is the kernel of the inverter, which determines utility current command, achieves the MPPT feature, realizes the self-learning algorithm for determining nonlinear inductance, and estimates inverter current for dynamically regulating inverter output current from exceeding its switch current ratings. In the following section, a detailed diagram of the system controller is presented and discussed. III. BLOCK DIAGRAM OF THE SYSTEM CONTROLLER A system controller block diagram of the proposed 1 2W inverter system is shown in Fig. 2, which consists of a selflearning unit, inverter-current estimator, load-current analyzer which can decompose load-demanded power into real, reactive, and harmonic components, utility-current-command calculator, MPPT controller, and dc-bus controller which is used to regulate dc-bus voltage during no insolation (i.e., no PV power injection). To reduce volume and increase exibility, most of these

features are programmed on a digital signal processor (DSP) chip, instead of using a large number of discrete devices. For the MPPT controller, the perturb-and-observe method [15], [16] is adopted owing to its simple structure and the fact that it requires fewer measured parameters. In the proposed PV inverter system, maximum power points of PV arrays and power quality of utility line are controlled from the utility side. With the proposed system controller, the optimal utility current commands can be determined to achieve the desired features. For determining the utility current commands, an estimated , is rst calculated by the inverter-current inverter current , the estimated load current estimator. Then, adding to can be derived, and through the load-current analyzer, a , can be determined. total quantity of load consumed power By subtracting , which is the maximum output PV power, , and then, multiplying by a unity sine function from , the real power component ( ) of the utility current can be determined. Finally, through the utility-current-command ) of calculator, we can determine reactive power component ( ) of the the utility current, and harmonic power component ( utility current. Therefore, the optimal utility current command , which is the total amount of , and , can be obtained. In the utility current controller, the error between an actual utility current and the optimal utility current command will modulate the duty ratio of gate signals to shape utility input current. In the following section, the derivation of current commands to achieve the desired features is presented. IV. DERIVATION OF CURRENT COMMANDS In the derivation of current commands, real power, reactive power, and distortion power are calculated rst, and then, a limit circle is introduced to conne inverter power. Optimal current commands are mainly related to the estimated inverter current and piecewise-linear lter inductance. Thus, estimation of inverter current and proposal of the self-learning algorithm to determine nonlinear inductance will also be discussed in this section.

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Fig. 2. Block diagram of the system controller.

Then, the 1 2W instantaneous real power can be calculated as

(3)
Fig. 3. Test loads used in the discussion.

where (4)

Based on extension of the theorem [12], real power and reactive power can be determined by averaging instantaneous real power and instantaneous reactive power, respectively. A 1 2W system with nonlinear load is conceptually represented in Fig. 3. In general, a nonlinear load current can be divided into three parts which are real power component ( ), reactive power component ( ), and distortion power component ( ). The nonlinear current can be expressed, in general, as follows:

and

(5) The instantaneous reactive power is obtained by

(1) and a utility voltage is given by (2) (6)

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where and

is the utility voltage shifted by 90 (7)

(8) and represent the constant parts, and and Notations denote the variant components. Then, the real power ( ) and reactive power ( ) of loads can be obtained by averaging the instantaneous power from (3) and (6), and the harmonic power ) can be derived from (9), which is given as follows: ( (9) denotes apparent power of loads. where , , and According to the previous results, spectively, be determined as follows: can, reFig. 4. A limit circle for controlling output harmonic power.

(10) (11) and (12) where is a unity sine function in phase with utility voltage. Similarly, a current command consisting of real power, reactive power, and distortion power components can be expressed as (13) equals , , and are the maximum PV power and averaged load power, is the ratio of the inverter output harmonic current to the is the ratio of the inverter output load harmonic current, current to the load current from reactive power component, and and represent the estimated current from distortion power component and that from reactive power component of loads, respectively. In (13), when the PV system is capable of providing the total amount of reactive power and distortion and will be unity. As a repower for loads, the ratios sult, the ltered utility current is sinusoidal and in phase with the utility voltage, and its amplitude will be determined by the maximum power drawn from PV arrays. Once inverter current exceeds the switch current ratings, the output current of the inand are verter is reduced accordingly and the ratios calculated as (14) and (15) and stand for inverter output current from where demanded reactive power and distortion power, respectively, which can be determined from the limit circle. Once inverter A. Inverter Current Estimation The proposed current estimator is used to estimate inverter . The operational principle of the estimator output current is based mainly on the voltage drop across the lter inductor, duty ratio of the switches, and lter inductance. For convenience where

Fig. 5.

A limit circle for controlling output reactive power.

output power exceeds the switch rating, supplied harmonic power from the inverter will be reduced within the limit circle, as illustrated in Fig. 4; thus, the ltered utility current is not sinusoidal but in phase with the utility voltage. Similarly, supplied reactive power of the inverter will be decreased according to the limit circle shown in Fig. 5, in which the ltered utility current will be sinusoidal but its phase is shifted from the zero crossing of the utility voltage. An optimal inverter current is mainly evaluated by the current estimator and self-learning algorithm, which are discussed in the following sections:

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Fig. 6. Conceptual circuit conguration of the discussed PV inverter system.

TABLE I VALUES OF THE SWITCHING FUNCTION CORRESPONDING TO VARIOUS SWITCHING STATES DURING THE SELF-LEARNING PERIOD Fig. 7. An equivalent circuit of the inverter in modes 1 and 3 during the ofine self-learning period.

of analysis, the proposed PV inverter system is simplied to an equivalent circuit shown in Fig. 6, where the estimated inverter can be obtained from the following equations: current

(16) and

Fig. 8. An equivalent circuit of the inverter in mode 2 during the ofine self-learning period.

(17) denotes an estimated inverter current at in where is an estimated inverter current, each switching period, is a piecewise-linear inductance corresponding to a , is a sampling time interval, specic bias current is a duty ratio of the switches, denotes the th sampling is the switching function which equals 1, 1, point, and or 0. Determination of the values of the switch function is summarized in Table I. As a result, the inverter current estimator can determine inverter current, and can dynamically adjust inverter current from exceeding the maximum switch current rating. Accuracy of an estimated current depends highly on the variations of the lter inductance. The proposed self-learning algorithm can identify the effect due to nonlinear inductance. The following section will present the self-learning algorithm. B. Self-Learning Algorithm Based on the proposed self-learning algorithm, accuracy of the estimated inductor current can be raised, and then, performance of the proposed system can be further improved. During the self-learning period, loads have not been connected to the utility and inverter current can be directly obtained from the cur-

rent sensor placed at the utility side. Over a self-learning period, operation of the inverter can be mainly divided into four modes, and they are described as follows. ): In the initial mode, as shown in Fig. 7, Mode 1 ( all of the active switches are turned off, the system reaches its steady state, the inverter current drops to zero, and dc-link voltage is set to the peak value of utility voltage ( ). When the system reaches the steady state and detects the zero-crossing point of utility voltage, operation of the inverter will shift to mode 2. ): Switches SW and SW , as shown Mode 2 ( in Fig. 8, are turned on and inverter current nonlinearly ramps is proportional to the up. In this mode, the inverter current operation interval and can be determined as (18) is the peak value of utility voltage, is an initial where represents an invalue of inverter current in mode 2, and ductance under a specic bias current. By rearranging (18), the inverter current expression in mode 2 can be shown as (19)

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A piecewise-linear inductance the following equation:

can be calculated from

(20) where is a sampling time interval and denotes the th sampling point. ): When inverter current reaches a Mode 3 ( preset level, all switches are turned off, as shown in Fig. 7. Energy stored in the lter inductor starts to discharge and is transferred to the dc-link capacitor through the body diodes. At the moment that inverter current reaches zero, operation of the incan verter will shift to mode 4. In mode 3, inverter current be derived from the following equation: (21) or

Fig. 9. An equivalent circuit of the inverter in mode 4 during the ofine self-learning period.

(22) Since dc-bus voltage is determined as (23) by substituting (22) into (23), can be then expressed as
Fig. 10. Gate signals of the switches and voltage and current waveforms of the inverter system over a self-learning period.

(24) where is an initial value in mode 3, which can be derived is also an initial value in mode 3, which from (19), and is equal to the peak value of utility voltage. ): Switches SW and SW , as shown Mode 4 ( in Fig. 9, are turned on which forces capacitor energy to recover. During the interval of mode 4, dc-link voltage is reduced continuously. Once the voltage drops below the peak value of line voltage, all switches are turned off again. It will not come back to mode 1 operation until the next ofine self-learning cycle. Through these four-mode operations, an accurate piecewise-linear inductance can be derived.

By properly controlling the active switches, piecewise-linear inductance under different bias currents can be estimated. A gating sequence of the active switches to complete the self-learning process and the corresponding waveforms of utility voltage, dc-bus voltage, and inverter current are illustrated in Fig. 10. In mode 2, the calculated piecewise-linear inductance from each switching cycle is an independent random value and is computed several times under a specic bias current. Thus, a PDF of Gaussian distribution is introduced as a criterion for judging the accuracy of the estimated inductance. The PDF for the Gaussian random variable is given by (25) where

(26)

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Fig. 11.

Deviation range dened by Gaussian distribution.

Fig. 12. Measured current and voltage waveforms of the combined linear and nonlinear loads.

and

Fig. 13. (a) Piecewise-linear inductance obtained with the proposed self-learning algorithm. (b) Simulation results of utility voltage, estimated inverter currents with nonlinear inductor consideration, and that without the consideration.

(27) In (26) and (27), denotes the measured results, stands for arithmetic mean, is the standard deviation, represents measured deviation, and is the number of measurements. From (25), the PDF of Gaussian distribution can be sketched as a bell shape and centered at the origin, as shown in Fig. 11. When is set to a lower value, the curve is shaped to a sharp and narrow one, and the error between the actual value and the measured result can be reduced. Hence, accuracy of the estimated results can be insured by adopting the Gaussian distribution. V. SIMULATED AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS To verify the feasibility of the proposed 1 2W PV inverter system for PV power injection and active power quality control with nonlinear inductor consideration, a DSP-based prototype is designed, simulated and implemented. The specications of the system are listed as follows: V PV arrays: SOLAREX MAGA SX-60, (15 pieces in series); 1 2W utility voltage: 110 V, 60 Hz; switching frequency: kHz. In addition, the important parameters are determined as mH, F; F, mH; power switches: insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), TOSHIBA GT15Q101, 1200 V/15 A. As shown in Fig. 3, the 1 2W testing load contains a linear load and a rectier load, which are connected to the PV inverter system. Measured current and voltage waveforms of the combined linear and nonlinear loads are shown in Fig. 12. After a
Fig. 14. Hardware measurements of utility voltage, ltered utility current, and inverter output current during no insolation.

Fig. 15. Measured waveforms of utility voltage, ltered utility current, and inverter output current during low insolation.

self-learning interval, the curve plotted in Fig. 13(a) shows the estimated piecewise-linear inductance. Fig. 13(b) shows utility voltage , estimated inverter current with nonlinear inductor consideration, and that without the consideration, in which there exists a big difference between the estimated currents. Fig. 14

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Fig. 16. Measured results of utility voltage, ltered utility current, and inverter output current when reactive power is partially provided.

Fig. 19. THD comparison of the proposed inverter with only one utility current sensor and a conventional inverter with both inverter current sensor and load current sensor under the loads shown in Fig. 3, in which equivalent real power load R varies from 400 to 1000 W.

in Fig. 18, in which the inverter current is sinusoidal and in phase with utility voltage. Fig. 19 shows that the proposed inverter system can achieve lower total harmonic distortion (THD) even though there is only one utility current sensed along with the estimated inverter current. The difference between the conventional and the proposed ones is primarily due to the fact that the utility current command is programmed assigned as a sinusoidal waveform in the proposed system.
Fig. 17. Measured results of utility voltage, ltered utility current, and inverter output current when harmonic power is partially provided.

VI. CONCLUSION A 1 2W PV inverter system for PV power injection and APF by taking into account the nonlinear effect of the output inductor lter has been analyzed, designed, simulated, and implemented. The system can deal with PV power, compensate current harmonics, and improve power factor simultaneously. Even though only a current sensor is placed at the utility side, the desired features can be still achieved. In the design, the utility current commands are derived to effectively utilize the inverter system. A current estimator is used to evaluate inverter current to prevent output power from exceeding the switch current ratings. In addition, a self-learning algorithm is also proposed and Gaussian distribution is applied to identify the nonlinear effect of the lter inductor. A DSP chip (TMS320F240) is adopted to determine the utility current-command, realize the current estimator, and achieve an MPPT feature so that the control circuits of the PV inverter system are compact and programmable. Simulated and experimental results have veried the proposed algorithms and feasibility of the PV inverter system. REFERENCES
[1] M. Yamaguchi, K. Kawarabayashi, and T. Takuma, Development of a new utility-connected photovoltaic inverter line back, in Proc. Int. Telecommunications Energy Conf., Oct./Nov. 1994, pp. 676682. [2] S. S. Bahu and S. Palanichamy, PC based controller for utility interconnected photovoltaic power conversion system, in Proc. IEEE PESC96, vol. 1, Jan. 1996, pp. 101106. [3] K. Hirachi, T. Mii, T. Nakashiba, K. G. D. Laknath, and M. Nakaoka, Utility-Interactive multi-functional bi-directional converter for solar photovoltaic power conditioner with energy storage batteries, in Proc. Int. Conf. Industrial Electronics, Control, and Instrumentation, vol. 3, Aug. 1996, pp. 16931698. [4] S.-J. Chiang, K.-T. Chang, and C.-Y. Yen, Residential photovoltaic energy storage system, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 385394, Jun. 1998. [5] D. C. Martins, R. Demonti, and R. Ruther, Analysis of utility interactive photovoltaic generation system using a single power static inverter, in Proc. Photovoltaic Specialists Conf., Sep. 2000, pp. 17191722.

Fig. 18.

Measured utility voltage and inverter current during high insolation.

shows measured results of utility voltage , ltered utility current , and inverter current , in which the ltered utility current is sinusoidal and in phase with the utility voltage. It can be observed that the system can provide the total amount of reactive power and distortion power for loads. During low insolation, experimental results shown in Fig. 15 reveal that PV power, reactive power, and harmonic power can be supplied to loads, while the system controller can shape the utility current to be sinusoidal. As long as inverter current exceeds the current ratings of the power switches, the inverter will reduce the supplied reactive power or harmonic power of the loads. If the system reduces the reactive power, the utility current will still be sinusoidal but not in phase with the utility voltage. This phenomenon is illustrated by Fig. 16. On the other hand, if full harmonic power of the loads cannot be supplied by the inverter system, the utility current will not be sinusoidal but can be in phase with the utility voltage, as shown in Fig. 17. During high insolation, the proposed inverter system only supplies real power to loads and injects real power to utility lines. The measured results are shown

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[6] T.-F. Wu, C.-H. Chang, and Y.-H. Chen, A fuzzy-logic-controlled single-stage converter for PV-powered lighting system applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 287296, Apr. 2000. [7] M. A. S. Masoum, H. Dehbonei, and E. F. Fuchs, Theoretical and experimental analyses of photovoltaic systems with voltage and current-based maximum power-point tracking, IEEE Trans. Energy Convers., vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 514522, Dec. 2002. [8] H.-S. Kim, G.-H. Choe, G.-J. Yu, and J. Song, Analysis of bi-directional PWM converter for application of residential solar air conditioning system, in Proc. Photovoltaic Specialists Conf., vol. 1, Dec. 1994, pp. 10691072. [9] N. Kikuchi et al., Single phase amplitude modulation inverter for utility interaction photovoltaic system, in Proc. Int. Conf. Industrial Electronics, Control, and Instrumentation, vol. 1, Nov. 1999, pp. 385389. [10] S. Kim, G. Yoo, and J. Song, A bi-functional utility connected photovoltaic system with power factor correction and facility, in Proc. Photovoltaic Specialists Conf., May 1996, pp. 13631368. [11] L. Cheng, R. Cheung, and K. H. Leung, Advanced photovoltaic inverter with additional active power line conditioning capability, in Proc. IEEE PESC97, vol. 1, Jun. 1997, pp. 279283. [12] T.-F. Wu, C.-L. Shen, C.-H. Chang, and J.-Y. Chiu, A 13W grid-connection PV power inverter with partial active power lter, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 635646, Apr. 2003. [13] T.-F. Wu, C.-L. Shen, and H.-S. Nei, A 13W grid-connection PV power inverter with partial APF based on nonlinear programming and FZPD algorithm, in Proc. IEEE PESC03, 2003, pp. 546552. [14] L.-G. Alberto, Probability and Random Processes for Electrical Engineering, 2nd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994. [15] F. Harashima, H. Inaba, and N. Takashima, Microprocessor-controlled SIT inverter for solar energy system, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. IE-34, no. 1, pp. 5055, Feb. 1987. [16] K. H. Hussein, I. Muta, T. Hoshino, and M. Osakada, Maximum photovoltaic power tracking: An algorithm for rapidly changing atmospheric, Proc. IEEGeneration, Transmission, Distrib., vol. 142, no. 1, pp. 5964, Jan. 1995.

Hung-Shou Nien was born in Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1979. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from National Yunlin University of Sciences and Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 2001. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests include design and implementation of switching-mode power supplies, photovoltaic-powered systems, and active power lters.

Tsai-Fu Wu (S89M91SM98) received the B.S. degree in electronics engineering from National Chiao-Tung University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1983, the M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Ohio University, Athens, in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1992. From 1985 to 1986, he was a System Engineer with SAMPO, Inc., Taiwan, R.O.C., developing and designing graphic terminals. He was a Teaching and Research Assistant in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago, from 1988 to 1992. Since 1993, he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C., where he is currently a Professor and the Department Head, and the Director of the Power Electronics Applied Research Laboratory (PEARL). His research interests include design and development of power converters, electronic dimming ballasts for uorescent lamps, metal halide lamps and plasma display panels, inverters for drawing power from PV arrays and wind turbines, fuel-cell boosters, active power lters, parallel-connection inverter systems, LED and CCFL backlight drivers for LCD TVs, electrical stunners for humane slaughter, pulsed voltage generators for food sterilization, and variable-speed motor drivers for electromechanical tool applications. Dr. Wu has been honored with two Best Paper Awards from the Taipei Power Electronics Association. He is a Senior Member of the Chinese Institute of Engineers.

Chih-Lung Shen was born in Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1962. He received the B.S. degree from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1988, the M.S. degree from National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1991, and the Ph.D. degree from National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 2003, all in electrical engineering. He is currently with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Nan-Jeon Institute of Technology, Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C., where he is an Associate Professor and Department Head. His research interests include development of power converters, photovoltaic-powered systems, and active power lters.

Tsung-Ming Chen was born in Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1963. He received the B.S. degree from National Feng-Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1990, and the M.S. degree from National Chung-Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 2003. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung-Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests include design and implementation of switching-mode power supplies and photovoltaic-powered systems.