As demand for green power and off-grid applications increase, distributed generators are becoming more commonplace. The range of power and voltage output rating are greatly extended with careful use of semiconductor devices employing appropriate soft switching techniques. This paper presents a review of the inverter topologies for single and multi-stage conversion and gives a classification according to power, input voltage rating and operating efficiency. The "trade-offs" required for high efficiency design are identified for each of the published circuits and the discussion of losses in both hard and soft switching topologies is given. The selection of soft switching topologies based on design requirement is discussed and efficiencies for various multi-stage inverters are provided. Final recommendations are offered for choosing optimum topologies based on the specific design parameters.

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