*Article* **A Family of Single-Stage, Buck-Boost Inverters for Photovoltaic Applications**

#### **Ben Zhao 1,\*, Alexander Abramovitz 2, Chang Liu 1, Yongheng Yang 3 and Yigeng Huangfu 1**



Received: 5 February 2020; Accepted: 21 March 2020; Published: 3 April 2020

**Abstract:** This paper introduces a family of single-stage buck-boost DC/AC inverters for photovoltaic (PV) applications. The high-gain feature was attained by applying a multi-winding tapped inductor, and thus, the proposed topologies can generate a grid-level AC output voltage without using additional high step-up stages. The proposed topologies had a low component count and consisted of a single magnetic device and three or four power switches. Moreover, the switches were assembled in a push-pull or half/full-bridge arrangement, which allowed using commercial low-cost driver-integrated circuits. In this paper, the operation principle and comparison of the proposed topologies are presented. The feasibility of the proposed topologies was verified by simulations and experimental tests.

**Keywords:** PV microinverters; converter topologies; single-stage; buck-boost; tapped inductor
