International Conference on Intelligent and Advanced Systems 2007

Power Electronic Interface for Grid-Connected PV array using Boost Converter and Line-Commutated Inverter with MPPT
1

Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, TamilNadu 641 010, India. 2 National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, TamilNadu 620 015, India. *ammas@nitt.edu

T.Shanthi1 and N.AmmasaiGounden2 *

Abstract Many methods for interfacing PV system with utility grid have been reported in the literature. In this paper, a power electronic interface using boost converter and line commutated inverter is proposed with maximum power point tracking (MPPT), for the first time. This paper presents the design , simulation and implementation of a simple power electronic interface for grid connected PV array using boost converter and line commutated inverter. The controller extracts maximum power from the solar array and feeds it to the singlephase utility grid. A closed loop scheme employing a PI controller has been modeled in the power system blockset platform and the complete system has been simulated. A prototype of the proposed system is built in the laboratory and simulated results are experimentally verified. Index terms boost converter, line commutated inverter, maximum power point tracking, grid-connected PV.
I.

NOMENCLATURE

Edc Em Idc Isc KP KI L L2 Pref Pact R2 Vd Vref VSA Voc

output voltage at the inverter(V) maximum grid voltage(V) dc link current(A) short-circuit current of solar array proportional gain integral gain boost converter inductance(H) dc link inductance(H) reference power from the solar array actual output power from the grid internal resistance of dc link () output voltage of boost converter(V) reference voltage for PI controller (V) solar array voltage(V) open-circuit voltage of solar array firing angle of the inverter duty cycle of the boost converter

II. INTRODUCTION The development in renewable energy sources replaces the other traditional energy sources. Among the renewable energy sources, solar energy plays a major role due to its pollutionfree nature. For economical reasons the solar energy is not directly interfaced with the utility grid. Hence a power electronic interface is developed to interface the solar systems to the utility grid [1,2]. This power electronic interface consists mainly an inverter and its output is given to a step-up transformer primary. The secondary of the transformer is connected to the grid [3,4]. The use of transformer introduces losses in the system and also needs more space and leads to noisy operation. Hence a boost converter is introduced between solar system and inverter which eliminates the use of transformer thereby reducing the losses. Further, recent researches have focused on how to get maximum power from solar energy [5] - [8]. All the schemes invariably employ forced commutation for an inverter. In the present paper, a closed loop controller employing line commutated SCR inverter for extracting maximum power from solar energy has been proposed. The inherent advantage of self latching property of SCRs has been exploited in the proposed scheme. III. PROPOSED SCHEME The block diagram schematic of the proposed solar energy conversion scheme is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of a solar array having three solar panels connected in series, interfaced to the single-phase utility grid through a power electronic interface. The DC voltage available at solar array is first stepped up to a voltage greater in magnitude to the grid voltage and converted to AC using the line commutated inverter in order to transfer the power to the utility grid. The actual grid voltage and current are sensed and applied to the MPPT controller. These two parameters are multiplied and this actual power is compared with the reference power Pref and the difference between these two powers is fed as input to the PI controller built inside the MPPT. The output of the PI controller modifies the firing angle such that the error gets minimized.

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International Conference on Intelligent and Advanced Systems 2007

Fig. 1. The block diagram schematic of the proposed solar energy conversion scheme.

A. Power Electronic Interface It consists of a boost converter, an inductor and line commutated inverter. The boost converter shown in Fig. 2 steps up the DC voltage available from the PV array. The duty cycle of the boost converter is automatically adjusted using PI controller in order to maintain a constant voltage at its output. This voltage can be calculated by (1) Vd = VSA/(1 - ) where VSA is the output DC voltage from the solar array and is the duty cycle of the boost converter. The can be adjusted by choosing proper values of proportional gain(KP) and integral gain(KI) in PI controller to give 260V DC at boost converter output. The KP and KI values chosen here are KP = 0.25, KI = 1.

inversion mode. When the firing angle is between 0 and 90, the converter is said to be in rectification mode and when is between 90 and 180, it is said to be in inversion mode. In the proposed scheme, the converter is operated as an inverter.

Fig. 3. Circuit for single-phase fully controlled bridge converter.

Fig. 2. Circuit for boost converter

The DC link current IDC is governed by the differential equation (2) dIdc/dt=(1/ L2)(Vd- Edc R2 Idc) where Edc = input DC voltage of the inverter B. Analysis of Line Commutated Inverter A single-phase fully controlled bridge converter shown in Fig. 3 can be operated either in rectification mode or in an

If the load is capable of supplying power, then the direction of power flow can be reversed by the reversal of the DC voltage, the current direction being unchanged. The delay angle must be greater than 90. In the present case, no extra effort is required to synchronize the inverter output frequency with that of the grid supply. This of course is possible only with SCR converters. The average output voltage Edc is hence given by Edc = (2Em/) cos (3) where Em = maximum voltage of the single-phase utility grid. (i) Harmonics: The rms value of nth harmonic input current is

I sn = 1 / 2

)(a n 2 + bn 2 )1 / 2 = (4 I dc /

2 n

)
(4)

= 2 2 I dc / n .

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International Conference on Intelligent and Advanced Systems 2007

The rms value of the fundamental current is

I s1 = 2 2 I dc /
+

)
2

(5)

The total rms current is given by,

I s = [ 2 / 2 I dc .d(t )

]1 / 2

(6) Now, harmonic factor (HF) or total harmonic distortion (THD) is given by,

= ( I dc /

)[t ] +

= I dc / .

THD = [

I s / I s1

)2 1 ]1 / 2
(7)

= 0.483 or 48.3%

solar arrays of 21.2V open circuit voltage and 5.17A short circuit current have been connected in series. A blocking diode is connected to prevent the reverse power flow. Boost converter has been fabricated with IRFP460 IGBT and controller for duty cycle variation is constructed using simple electronic circuits. A single-phase SCR converter has been fabricated using 50RIA120 SCRs and a microcontroller firing scheme has been developed to trigger SCRs. The firing angle of the inverter is adjusted to feed maximum power to the grid. Care has been taken to see that the firing angle is kept above 90 in order to facilitate inverter operation. The microcontroller PIC16F876A is made use of here. The program for the microcontroller is written in MPLABIDE software and verified using PROTEUS software and loaded in the microcontroller chip using PICSTARTPLUS. The results obtained from the experimental investigation and simulation study of the proposed scheme are furnished in Table I for comparison. It is seen that there is very close agreement between the two, which ensures the validity of the proposed scheme.
TABLE I COMPARISON OF SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS = 160 Simulation Experimental Parameters Results Results DC link voltage, Vdc DC link current, Idc Grid current, Igrid Active power fed to the grid, Pgrid -120 V 1.8 A 0.8 A -75.6 W -123.5 V 2.0 A 1.0 A -79 W

IV. MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING CONTROLLER In order to extract the maximum power from the solar system, the firing angle of the inverter is adjusted in closed loop. The maximum power available at the solar array is used as the reference power and is given by (8) Pref = K1.Voc x K2.Isc where K1 and K2 are constants given by [9], K1=0.76; K2=0.8; The actual output power, Pact is compared with the reference power and any mismatch is used to change the firing angle of the inverter as follows: = (Pref Pact)[Kp + KI/s] (9) where Kp and KI are the proportional and integral stage gains respectively. The optimum values for KP and KI have been arrived at by trial and error method. In the MPPT controller, the P and I controller gains are chosen as KP = 0.3; KI = 7; V. SIMULATION RESULTS The proposed solar energy scheme is completely modeled using MATLAB simulink blocks in PSB platform. It consists of solar array block, boost converter, line commutated inverter, single-phase power grid and closed loop controllers. The solar array model that has been proposed by S.Arul Daniel and N.AmmasaiGounden [10] is used in the proposed scheme. The different parameters of the proposed scheme are: L1=0.01mH; L=1mH; C=1000F; L2=20mH; Rd=0.2. As the solar radiation increases, the output of the solar array increases. For any variation in solar irradiation, the output of the boost converter is held constant. The closed loop model of the proposed scheme is simulated and the results are given along with experimental readings. VI. E XPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION The experimental setup of the closed loop scheme consists of solar array, boost converter, a line commutated inverter, controller to generate firing pulses to the thyristors and controller for adjusting duty cycle of boost converter. Three

The simulated and oscillographic waveforms of DC link current are shown in Fig. 4. Similarly the observed and simulated waveforms of voltage and current at the grid are given in Fig. 5. The harmonic spectrum of the grid current obtained is shown in Fig. 6. It can be observed that THD is nearly the same as given by (7). The validity of the controller can be ascertained by the close agreement between experimental and simulated waveforms shown in Figs. 4 and 5. The firing pulses for SCRs corresponding to a maximum power point are shown in Fig. 7.

(a)

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International Conference on Intelligent and Advanced Systems 2007

(b) Fig. 4. Waveforms of dc link current (a) simulated (b) experimental

Fig. 7. Firing pulses to SCRs VII. CONCLUSION A simple closed loop scheme employing a boost converter and single-phase line commutated inverter has been developed for interfacing solar array with the utility grid. Simulation studies have been carried out to get the various parameters of the scheme such as active power and reactive powers, DC link voltage, current and the firing angle corresponding to the maximum power for given solar radiation. Experimental set up has been built using a BP1280 solar cells and a PIC microcontroller has been programmed to generate the trigger pulses for the SCRs and the firing angle is adjusted to feed maximum active power to the grid. As the inverter is being operated as line commutated, the synchronization of output frequency with grid frequency does not arise. However due to losses in the inductor, the output power fed to the grid is fairly small. This can be increased by selecting an inductor with low losses. Further, the THD of output current waveform is fairly high due to harmonics introduced by switching of the inverter. This requires a tuned filter to be connected across the grid terminals.

(a)

(b) Fig. 5. Voltage and current waveforms at the grid (a) experimental (b) simulated

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The PV panels used in this scheme were procured from the fund provided by Ministry of Human Resource and Development, India under the Thrust Area for Technical Education Scheme. The authors gratefully acknowledge the same. The authors also thank V.Manimaran, M.Prabhu and M.Rajesh for their assistance in conducting the experiment. REFERENCES [1] Koosuke Harada and Gen Zhao, Controlled power interface between solar cells and ac source, IEEE transactions on Power Electronics, Vol.8, No.4, October 1993, pp. 654-662,. [2] S.Yuvarajan and Shanguang Xu, Photo-voltaic power converter with a simple Maximum power point tracker, IEEE conference proceedings, 2003, pp. 399-402. [3] Henry Shu-Hung Chung, Member, IEEE, K.K.Tse, Member, IEEE, S.Y.Ron Hui, Fellow IEEE, C.M.Mok, and M.T.Ho, Student Member, IEEE, A novel Maximum Power Point Tracking Technique for solar Panels Using a SEPIC or Cuk Converter, IEEE transactions on Power Electronics, Vol.18, No.3, May 2003, pp. 717-724. [4] N.Patcharaprakiti and S.Premrudeepreechacharn, Member, IEEE, Maximum power point tracking using adaptive fuzzy logic control for Gridconnected photovoltaic system, IEEE conference proceedings,2002, pp.372377. [5] M.Veerachary, T.Senjyu and K.Uezato, Maximum Power Point Tracking Control of IDB converter supplied PV system, IEE proceedings Electric Power Appl. Vol.148, No.6, Nov 2001, pp.494-502.

Fig. 6. Harmonic spectrum of the grid current.

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[6] F.Huang, D.Tien and James Or, A microcontroller based automatic sun tracker combined with a new solar energy conversion unit, IEEE conference proceedings, 1998, pp. 488-492. [7] Noguchi Toshihiko, Togashi Shigenori and Nakamoto Ryo, Shortcurrent pulse based adaptive maximum - power point tracking for photovoltaic power generation system, IEEE conference proceedings, 2000, pp. 157-162. [8] R.Leyva, C.Alonso, I.Queinnec, A.Cid-pastor, D.Lagrange and L.Martinez-Salamero, MPPT of photovoltaic systems using Extremum seeking control, IEEE transactions on aerospace and electronic systems, Vol.42, No.1, January 2006, pp.249-258. [9] Dong-Yun Lee, Hyeong-Ju Noh, Dong-seok Hyun and Ick Choy, An Improved MPPT Converter Using Current Compensation Method for Small Scaled PV-Applications, IEEE conference, 2003, pp. 540-545. [10] S.Arul Daniel, N.Ammasai Gounden, A Novel Hybrid Isolated Generating System Based on PV Fed Inverter-Assisted Wind-Driven Induction Generators, IEEE transactions on energy conversion, Vol.19, No.2, June 2004, pp. 416-422.

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