Differential Power Processing Architectures Accounting for the Differential Power of the Converters

In this paper, a new perspective on the analysis and comparison of Differential Power Processing (DPP) architectures by using Continuous Power Model (CPM) and VA area interpretation is presented. Rather than accounting for the nominal power delivered by the DPP converters, the direct power \pmb(Pdir) and differential power \pmb(Pdiff) are used for the comparison. CPM and VA area are used to calculate \pmbPdir and \pmbPdiff at architecture level and to visualize the direct power transfer path, then the equations are derived for each architecture. Afterwards, statistical analysis is conducted to compare different DPP architectures with variations of sunlight irradiance level on each PV module and varied numbers of stacked modules in the strings. Finally, a conceptual architecture which can reach the theoretical limit is proposed.