U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright. This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JESTPE.2013.2294640, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics JESTPE-2013-07-0105 Abstract—This paper explores the design of smart photovoltaic (PV) modules- PV modules in which PV cells in close proximity are electrically grouped to form pixels and are connected to dc-dc converter blocks which reside embedded in the back pane of the modules. An auto-connected flyback converter topology processing less than full power is used to provide high gain and perform maximum power point tracking (MPPT). These dc-dc converters interface with cascaded H-bridge inverter modules operating on feed forward control for dc-link voltage ripple rejection. By means of feed forward control, a significant reduction in dc link capacitance is achieved by enduring higher dc link ripple voltages. The dc link electrolytic capacitors are replaced with film capacitors thus offering an improvement in the reliability of the smart PV module. The proposed configuration is capable of producing 120V/ 240V AC voltage. The PV module now becomes a smart AC module by virtue of embedded intelligence to selectively actuate the individual dc-dc converters and control the output AC voltages directly, thus becoming a true plug and power energy system. Such a concept is ideal for curved surfaces such as building integrated PV (BIPV) system applications where gradients of insolation and temperature cause not only variations from PV module-to-PV module but from group-to-group of cells within the module itself. A detailed analysis along with simulation and experimental results confirm the feasibility of the proposed concept. Index Terms—PV modules, MPPT, flyback converter, feed forward control, inverter I. INTRODUCTION ower conditioning for solar photovoltaic modules has undergone a tremendous development in the recent years to keep pace with emerging technologies and the growing PV industry. Past technology was based on centralized PV converters which exhibited some severe limitations, such as power losses due to a centralized MPPT, mismatch losses between the PV modules, and fixed designs where the This paragraph of the first footnote will contain the date on which you submitted your paper for review. It will also contain support information, including sponsor and financial support acknowledgment. For example, “This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Commerce under Grant BS123456”. The next few paragraphs should contain the authors’ current affiliations, including current address and e-mail. For example, F. A. Author is with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO 80305 USA (e- mail: author@ boulder.nist.gov). S. B. Author, Jr., was with Rice University, Houston, TX 77005 USA. He is now with the Department of Physics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 USA (e-mail: author@lamar.colostate.edu). T. C. Author is with the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 USA, on leave from the National Research Institute for Metals, Tsukuba, Japan (e-mail: author@nrim.go.jp). benefits of modularity and mass production could not be reached [1, 2].The present day string converter suffers from disadvantages like complex circuitry, reduced efficiency due to more number of stages etc. With the advent of micro inverters where every PV module is interfaced to an inverter, energy harvest has improved significantly and enabled the feature of plug and play [1-4]. This paper proposes the concept of smart PV module which takes the concept of micro inverter a step further by incorporating power electronics within the PV module. Moreover, the proliferation of low power integrated circuits (IC’s) in today’s market has made it worthwhile to explore innovative power architectures for solar PV which could potentially capture the low power IC industry. Fig. 1 illustrates the front and back view of the smart PV module. In the front pane of the panel, a group of cells are electrically interconnected to form a pixel [5]. Each pixel has two electrical terminals which connect to dc-dc converters embedded in the back pane of the module shown in dotted lines. The output of these converters are series connected and fed into H bridge inverter modules to produce 120V/ 240V AC. Advantages of smart PV module are: • The power electronic circuitry along with MPPT algorithm associated with each pixel can be combined within a monolithic IC. • The approach enables easy integration of PV modules of any type in series/parallel configurations to suite Analysis and Design of Smart PV Modules Poornima Mazumdar, Student Member, IEEE, Prasad N. Enjeti, Fellow, IEEE and Robert S. Balog, Senior Member, IEEE P Fig. 1 Front and back view of proposed smart PV module