Acknowledgement of renewable sources of energy as substitute energy sources for power production has expanded the number of distributed generation plants being incorporated into the conventional power distribution system. The single-phase voltage source inverter allying the photovoltaic plant with the grid has to address various issues identified with the quality of current injected into the grid, output power factor and power exchange between the plant and the grid. This paper concentrates on the investigation, design and implementation of a digital predictive current control technique known as the model predictive current controller for the control of single-phase photovoltaic distributed generation plants. The performance of the controller is evaluated under varied operating conditions. The proposed current controller is compared with the conventional proportional–integral controller in terms of its design methodology, steady state and dynamic response. The simulation and experimental results validates the effectiveness of the proposed model predictive current controller.