**6. Experimental Results**

As shown in Figure 14, an experimental prototype with five H-bridge units has been established to validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The prototype includes a central controller and five local controllers. The BECKHOFF industrial PC (CX2040) is utilized as the central controller and TMS320F28335 processors are used as local controllers which communicate with each other through an EtherCAT real-time communication network. The EtherCAT protocol features not only enhance the effective synchronization between master and slave clocks, but also improves the synchronization between the H-bridge units. Since the testing equipment of the university laboratory is limited, only the first H-bridge unit is connected to a Chroma62020H-150S PV simulator, and the DC side of the four other H-bridge units are connected to a 36 V switching power supply through a 0.5 Ω resistance, respectively, to simulate PV modules. Given that there are only five H-bridge units in the experiment, the output of the inverter is connected to the 130 V AC grid regulated by a voltage regulator. The other parameters of the experimental system are the same as the simulation parameters.

**Figure 14.** Experimental platform of the single-phase PV CHB module level inverter.
