Solar Energy Systems (SES) are quite popular owing to their own merits. SES consist of DC to AC converters. In this paper, Z-Source inverter based SES has been proposed. The switching of these converters is currently addressed through soft computing techniques. The gate pulse required for switching are generated through Fuzzy Logic (FL). The proposed FL switching scheme has been simulated using MATLAB/Simulink and the results have been resented. The results depict that the proposed scheme has reduced THD of 8.92%, compared to its conventional counterpart and can be used even under partial shadowing conditions of the SES.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Introduction:-Solar Energy Systems (SES) are quite popular due to the reasons which include, pollution free environment, availability in abundant, noise less and low maintenance cost. The SES system consist of Photo Voltaic Systems (PV) that generate electricity from solar energy. The power generation capacity determines the size of the system, which makes it to be more robust and compact. Everyday there exists an advancement in the conversion technologies of solar power. Researchers concentrate widely on improving the quality of power converted and delivered from the source to the utilities. In SES, the problem that occurs mainly is the way to increase the output voltage. To increase it several units of solar panels are being connected in series. The main drawback is that it reduces the reliability and thereby affecting the efficiency of the system. The PV cell converts the solar energy into DC voltage and it depends on various factors. The prime factor being the irradiance of the sunlight. The output of the PV cell is converted into AC through inverter and then fed to the consumer or to the grid. Multi-Level Inverters (MLI) are widely used to convert the DC to AC in the SES. Initially, the output of the PV module is strengthened using DC-DC converters.In these MLI based SES modules, the output of the PV cell is modulated through DC-DC converters and then fed to the MLIs. Z-Source inverter is another type of inverter topology that doesn"t require DC-DC converter. The recent investigations are focusing on the development of new strategies for DC-AC conversion, in order to improve the conversion efficiency. The conventional method is to step-up the AC output voltage through a step-up transformer. 3-Phase MLIs are also employed in the SES [1]. The problems associated with these conventional methods are electromagnetic interference, size, acoustic noise and high cost [2]. To overcome, these drawbacks, the Z-Source inverters have been suggested [3][4][5]. These inverters employ less number of switches compared to the conventional inverters.