Author(s)

Yuji Ando¹, Yasuhiro Shirahata¹, Takeo Oku^1*, Taisuke Matsumoto¹, Yuya Ohishi¹, Masashi Yasuda², Akio Shimono³, Yoshikazu Takeda³, Mikio Murozono⁴

¹Department of Materials Science, The University of Shiga Prefecture, Shiga, Japan.
²Collaborative Research Center, The University of Shiga Prefecture, Shiga, Japan.
³Kyoshin Electric Company Limited, Kyoto, Japan.
⁴Clean Venture 21 Corporation, Kyoto, Japan.

100-W class power storage systems were developed, which comprised spherical Si solar cells, a maximum power point tracking charge control-ler, a lithium-ion battery, and one of two different types of direct current (DC)-alter- nating current (AC) converters. One inverter used SiC met-al-oxide-semicon-ductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) as switching devices while the other used Si MOSFETs. In these 100-W class inverters, the ON resistance was considered to have little influence on the efficiency. Nevertheless, the SiC-based inverter exhibited an approximately 3% higher DC-AC conversion efficiency than the Si-based inverter. Power loss analysis indicated that the higher efficiency resulted predominantly from lower switching and reverse recovery losses in the SiC MOSFETs compared with in the Si MOSFETs.

Silicon Carbide, Solar Cell, Inverter, Photovoltaic Device, Maximum Power Point Tracking, Lithium-Ion Battery

Ando, Y. , Shirahata, Y. , Oku, T. , Matsumoto, T. , Ohishi, Y. , Yasuda, M. , Shimono, A. , Takeda, Y. and Murozono, M. (2017) Comparison between SiC- and Si-Based Inverters for Photovoltaic Power Generation Systems. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 5, 30-40. doi: 10.4236/jpee.2017.51003.