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US 11,146,062 B2Granted
Method and apparatus for improving PV module fill factor using a voltage clamping circuit
AssigneeEnphase Energy, Inc.
InventorsMichael Harrison, Erik Weyker, Martin Fornage
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus for voltage clamping including: measuring a DC voltage across the PV module at an input of a power converter, comparing the measured DC voltage to the overvoltage threshold, determining the measured DC voltage exceeds the overvoltage threshold, and operating a clamping circuit to clamp at least a portion of the DC voltage prior to input to the power converter.
Claims17
A method for voltage clamping a photovoltaic (PV) module comprising:
- measuring a DC voltage across an output of the PV module that is coupled across an input of a power converter, wherein the PV module comprises a plurality of substrings of PV cells;
- comparing the measured DC voltage to an overvoltage threshold;
- determining the measured DC voltage exceeds the overvoltage threshold;
- and
- operating a clamping circuit to clamp the DC voltage, by clamping fewer than all substrings of the plurality of substrings, to a value between an open circuit voltage of the PV module and a maximum power point voltage of the PV module.
2 more elements
An apparatus for clamping a voltage of a photovoltaic (PV) module comprising:
- a first switch coupled across a substring of PV cells of a plurality of substrings of PV cells of the PV module;
- and
- a controller for measuring a DC voltage across an output of the PV module, comparing the measured DC voltage to an overvoltage threshold, determining the measured DC voltage exceeds the overvoltage threshold, and operating the first switch to clamp the DC voltage, by clamping only the substring, to a value between an open circuit voltage of the PV module and a maximum power point voltage of the PV module.
A system for clamping a photovoltaic (PV) module voltage comprising:
- a plurality of PV modules;
- a plurality of power converters coupled to the plurality of PV modules in a one-to-one correspondence;
- and
- a plurality of clamping circuits, wherein each clamping circuit in the plurality of clamping circuits is integrated with a corresponding PV module of the plurality of PV modules in a one-to-one correspondence, comprising:
- a first switch coupled across a substring of PV cells of a plurality of substrings of PV cells of the PV module;
- and
- a controller for measuring a DC voltage across an output of the PV module, comparing the measured DC voltage to an overvoltage threshold, determining the measured DC voltage exceeds the overvoltage threshold, and operating the first switch to clamp the DC voltage, by clamping the substring, to a value between an open circuit voltage of the PV module and a maximum power point voltage of the PV module.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.