A cascaded multilevel inverter and method for operating photovoltaic cells at a maximum power point

A method (300) of operating a cascaded multilevel inverter (30) of photovoltaic system (10) to transfer electrical power from a plurality of photovoltaic cells (16, 18, 20) onto an electrical power distribution grid (12). Power switches (32, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) in the inverter are operated in a manner effective to combine a block voltage (V1, V2, Vn) output from each selected photovoltaic blocks series-wise to output an inverter voltage (IV) substantially equal to the grid voltage (GV). A selected photovoltaic block may be pulse width modulated to adjust incrementally a current or voltage output by the system (10). The photovoltaic blocks selected to contribute to the current or voltage output by the system are selected based on a desire to operate solar panels formed by the photovoltaic cells at a maximum power point (MPP) of each solar panel (28) in a photovoltaic block. Shuffling of which blocks are selected may occur at any time during synthesizing a sinusoidal output signal.