This paper investigates the performance of a battery-less photovoltaic desalination system. Lead-acid batteries have been removed from the system due to adverse environmental effects, a shorter lifespan, and to reduce the total cost. Due to the lack of a storage device, starting a high current load like an AC compressor leads to electrical instability of the system. The proposed solution for this problem includes using a combination of two high-capacity electrolyte capacitors, one at the PV terminals and the other at the single-phase inverter input terminals. Suitable resistive starters have also been sized and added to the circuit to limit the inrush current of capacitors at the energization moment. An analytical procedure has been introduced to design the optimal size of the capacitors and the starter resistors. The results of a 1.1 kW test system show that using two capacitors, 12 000 μf/ 350 Volts as C1 and 330 000 μf/ 50 Volts as C2, at the same time, can handle a starting current of 12 Amps for the starting period of 100 ms of the AC compressor. The maximum voltage drop on the capacitors will be 48 and 17%, which are in the accepted range, and no instability happens.
