Grid Integration of Photovoltaic System with Power Quality Improvement

Jabir U A
Dept. of EEE Sijas1234@gmail.com Government Engineering College Idukki

Dr. Jayanand P
Dept. of EEE Government Engineering College Idukki

Abstract Renewable energy utilization is promoted for reducing fossil fuel consumption, and also for better power utilization. Solar energy is the most prominent among renewable energy sources. This paper presents a topology to link the solar energy to grid at distribution level with maximum efficiency as well as to improve the power quality of overall grid system. The photovoltaic (PV) panel is modeled based on associated equations. For improving the output power from PV panel, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control is being employed. For achieving power quality improvement 4legged grid-interfacing inverters are installed in 3-phase 4-wire distribution systems. The inverter is controlled to perform as a multi-function device by incorporating active power filter functionality. The inverter can thus be utilized as: 1) power converter to inject power generated from RES to the grid, and 2) shunt APF to compensate current unbalance, load reactive power demand and load neutral current. This method will make the integration of solar energy with the grid easier and also improves the overall efficiency of power system. One of the important advantage of this method is that together with the power transfer from solar cell, power quality improvement is achieved without affecting its normal operation. Keywords Photovoltaic; Maximum Power Point Tracking; Grid-interfacing inverters; Shunt APF.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Demand for electric power is increasing exponentially in comparison with its production. Irrespective of this sixty percent of total power demand is being met by burning fossil fuels. The increasing air pollution, global warming and diminishing fossil fuels made it necessary to look towards renewable sources to meet the future energy solution. Importance on renewable energy sources for power generation has increased in last decade. Research works in renewable energy field also reduced the cost per unit power. The market liberalization and incentives from governments have further accelerated the renewable power sector growth. Renewable energy source (RES) connected at distribution level is termed as distributed generation (DG). Solar and wind energy is the most prominent among renewable energy sources. Due to equatorial geography India has abundant solar energy as compared with wind. Government sector has also increased incentives and supports for solar power generation so as to improve the renewable energy power generation. Price and quantity controls of carbon emissions through taxation and cap

and trade policies, along with renewable portfolio standards (RPS) also are reasons for massive penetration of renewable energy resources and for electrification of transportation. For reducing the greenhouse gas emission, certain states has made laws stating that a certain percentage of overall power generation must came from renewable energy. However, the operating characteristic of the renewable energy resources, which are strongly influenced by weather patterns, has a profound impact on the planning and operation of the power grid. The main two characteristics which make the integration of renewable energy sources to grid as difficult are that, they are uncertain and cannot be forecasted accurately. These problems are particularly severe with respect to wind power whose availability is inversely correlated with demand. The unpredictability of wind power supply that may change rapidly due to cold fronts and wind shifts can cause large deviations from hour ahead dispatch schedules, as may a moving cloud cover affect supply from solar resources. However starting up solar or wind power for the compensation of any loads will take time. Also emergency start-up will leads to the creation of increased cost due to the wear produced for it. Such emergency start-ups also disrupt market operations and increase dispatch cost due to the minimum load constraints of these units. The utility is concerned due to the high penetration level of intermittent RES in distribution systems as it may pose a threat to network in terms of stability, voltage regulation and powerquality (PQ) issues [1]. Therefore, the DG systems are required to comply with strict technical and regulatory frameworks to ensure safe, reliable and efficient operation of overall network.[2] With the advancement in power electronics and digital control technology, the DG systems can now be actively controlled to enhance the system operation with improved PQ at PCC. However, the extensive use of power electronics based equipment and non-linear loads at PCC generate harmonic cur rents, which may deteriorate the quality of power. Mostly, current controlled inverter is being used to interface RES with the distribution system[3]. The non-linear load current harmonics may result in voltage harmonics and can create a serious PQ problem in the power system network. Active power filters (APF) are extensively used to compensate the load current harmonics and load unbalance at distribution level. This results in an additional hardware cost. However, in this paper authors have incorporated the features of APF in the, conventional inverter interfacing renewable with the grid, without any additional hardware cost [4]. Here, the main idea is

the maximum utilization of inverter rating which is most of the time underutilized due to intermittent nature of RES. It is shown in this paper that the grid-interfacing inverter can effectively be utilized to perform following important functions: 1) transfer of active power harvested from the renewable resources (wind, solar, etc.); 2) load reactive power demand support; 3) current harmonics compensation at PCC; and 4) current unbalance and neutral current compensation in case of 3-phase 4-wire system. Moreover, with adequate control of grid-interfacing inverter, all the four objectives can be accomplished either individually or simultaneously. The PQ constraints at the PCC can therefore be strictly maintained within the utility standards without additional hardware cost [5]. II.

SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

The proposed system consists of RES with a DC link capacitor of grid interphasing inverter as shown in Fig. 1. The voltage source inverter is the key element of the system that delivers the power from RES to the grid system. The RES may be a DC source or an AC source with rectifier coupled to dclink. Usually, the fuel cell and photovoltaic energy sources generate power at variable low dc voltage, while the variable speed wind turbines generate power at variable ac voltage. Thus, the power generated from these renewable sources needs power conditioning (i.e., dc/dc or ac/dc) before connecting on dc-link. The dc-capacitor decouples the RES from grid and also allows independent control of converters on either side of dclink.

from the solar panel is being fed to the grid system. PV cells are made of semiconductor materials, such as silicon. For solar cells, a thin semiconductor wafer is specially treated to form an electric field, positive on one side and negative on the other. When light energy strikes the solar cell, electrons are knocked loose from the atoms in the semiconductor material. 1) Modeling of PV Array:The building block of solar cell is a p-n junction which converts solar radiation to electricity. So p-n junction could be modeled by use of some equations that denote the perfomance of such a cell [7].The current source Iph represents the cell photo current; Rj is used to represent the non-linear impedance of the p-n junction; Rsh and Rs are used to represent the intrinsic series and shunt resistance of the cell respectively [8]. Usually the value of Rsh is very large and that of Rs is very small, hence they may be neglected to simplify the analysis. PV cells are grouped in larger units called PV modules which are further interconnected in series-parallel configuration to form PV arrays or PV generators. The PV mathematical model used to simplify our PV array is represented by the equation.

where I is the PV array output current; V is the PV array output voltage; ns is the number of cells in series and np is the number of cells in parallel; q is the charge of an electron; k is the Boltzmanns constant; A is the p -n junction ideality factor; T is the cell temperature (K); Irs is the cell reverse saturation current. The factor A in equation determines the cell deviation from the ideal p-n junction characteristics. The cell reverse saturation current Irs varies with temperature according to the following equation

Where Tr is the cell reference temperature, Irr is the cell reverse saturation temperature at Tr and EG is the band gap of the semiconductor used in the cell. The temperature dependence of the energy gap of the semi conductor is given by The photo current Iph depends on the solar radiation and cell temperature as follows

Where Iscr is the cell short-circuit current at reference temperature and radiation, Ki is the short circuit current temperature coefficient, and S is the solar radiation in mW/cm2. The PV power can be calculated using the above equation
Fig. 1. Proposed System.

A. Renewable Energy Source Solar power generation is considered as the most prominent RES. In this paper integration of photovoltaic system with the grid is being done [6]. DC voltage developed

a) MPPT using Perturbation observation method: PV array cannot operate at higher efficiency all the time. So the power delivered at the output side of the array varies with time. Inorder to make photovoltaic arrays output more power

in the same sunshine, temperature and other conditions, power electronic devices with maximum power point tracker (MPPT) control should be used in photovoltaic power generation system. PV system controller changes its output as required in step size. The step size is generally fixed while mode can also be increased or decreased. Both PV array output voltage and output current can be the control object, so this process is called "perturbation"; then, by comparing PV array output power of the cycles before and after the perturbation. If power output is increased, perturbation" will continue to work follow the direction in the previous cycle, else, if power output is decreased, perturbation" will change the direction. In this way, the actual operating point of PV array can move closer to the maximum power point, and ultimately back and forth to reach steady state in a relatively small area

The different steps of the Perturb and Observe method are: 1. Take current and voltage measurements, power calculation, 2. If the power is constant, return to take new measurements, 3. If the power decreased or increased, test the voltage variation, 4. According to the direction of the voltage variation, modify the current

Fig. 4. Block diagram of the MPPT method,Perturb and Observe.

B. DC-Link Voltage and Power Control Operation Due to unpredictable nature of RES, generated power will be variable in nature. The dc-link plays an important role of transferring power from RES to the Grid interphasing inverter. RES are represented as current sources connected to the dc-link of a grid-interfacing inverter. Fig. 5 shows the systematic representation of power transfer from the renewable energy resources to the grid via the dc-link.

Fig. 2. Output power using the MPPT method ,Perturb and Observe.

If power output is being increased, perturbation" continue in the same manner as the step before, else, if power output is decreased, perturbation" will change the direction. In this way, the actual operating point of PV array can move closer to the maximum power point, and ultimately back and forth to reach steady state in a relatively small area. Flow chart for P&O method given in Fig. 3.
Fig. 5. DC-Link equivalent diagram.

The current injected by renewable into dc-link at voltage level Vdc can be given as

Where PRES is the power generated from RES. If inverter losses are negligible then
=

Fig. 3. Flow chart for P&O algorithm.

C. Control of Grid Interfacing Inverter The control block diagram of grid- interfacing inverter for a 3-phase 4-wire system is shown in Fig. 6 in which hysteresis control is being employed. The fourth leg of inverter is used to compensate the neutral current of load. The main aim of proposed approach is to regulate the power at PCC during: 1) PRES=0, 2) PRES< Total load power (PL) and 3) PRES>PL.

Where =10 and =0.05 are proportional and integral gains of dc-voltage regulator. The instantaneous values of reference three phase grid currents are computed as
=. =. =.

The neutral current flowing due to unbalance in the four wire distribution system must be compensated by the fourth leg of inverter and should not be allowed to draw from central grid system. In other words, the reference current for the grid neutral current is considered as zero and can be expressed as
=

The reference grid currents , , and are compared with actual grid currents ,, to compute the current errors as
= Fig. 6. Block diagram representation of grid-interfacing inverter control. = =

While performing the power management of the system switching is done in such a way that it will draw or feed active power from or to the grid system. If the load connected to the PCC is non-linear or unbalanced or the combination of both, the given control approach also compensates the harmonics, unbalance, and neutral current [9]. The duty ratio of the inverter is so varied that it will convert the non linear load connected to the system to act as a resistive balanced load. The regulation of dc-link voltage carries the information regarding the exchange of active power in between renewable source and grid. Thus the output of dc-link voltage regulator results in an active current IM. The multiplication of active current component with unity grid voltage vector templates generates the reference grid currents , and . The reference grid neutral current ( ) is set to zero, being the instantaneous sum of balanced grid currents. The grid synchronizing angle obtained from phase locked loop (PLL) is used to generate unity vector template.
= =( ) = (+)

These current errors are given to hysteresis current controller. The hysteresis controller then generates the switching pulses (1 to 8 ) for the gate drives of gridinterfacing inverter. The switching pattern of each IGBT inside inverter can be formulated on the basis of error between actual and reference current of inverter, which can be explained as:if < then upper switch 1 will be OFF (1=0 ) and lower switch 4 will be on (4=1 ) in the phase a leg of Inverter If >( ) then upper switch 1 will be ON (1=1) and lower switch 4 will be OFF 4=0 in the phase a leg of Inverter Where is the width of hysteresis band. III. SIMULATION RESULTS In order to verify the proposed control approach to achieve multi-objectives for grid interfaced photovoltaic systems connected to a 3-phase 4-wire network, an extensive simulation study is carried out using MATLAB/Simulink. A 4-leg current controlled voltage source inverter is actively controlled to achieve balanced sinusoidal grid currents at unity power factor (UPF) despite of highly unbalanced nonlinear load at PCC under varying renewable generating conditions. A RES with variable output power is connected on the dc-link of gridinterfacing inverter. An unbalanced 3-phase 4-wire nonlinear load, whose unbalance, harmonics, and reactive power need to be compensated, is connected on PCC. The waveforms of grid voltage(,,) ,grid currents (,, ), unbalanced load current and inverter currents ,, are shown in Fig. 8. The proposed model was simulated in MATLAB. Block diagram of simulation model is shown in Fig. 7. The circuit consist of a grid network which is being used to charge a bundle of loads consisting of both three phase and single phase, just as if in domestic power distribution system. Initially the grid is being connected with a three phase load. And the power being supplied from renewable energy source is zero. Since it is connected to a three phase load only, the load is balanced one and neutral current is zero.

The actual dc-link voltage is sensed and passed through a first-order low pass filter (LPF) to eliminate the presence of switching ripples on the dc-link voltage () and in the generated reference current signals. The difference of this filtered dc-link voltage and reference dc-link voltage( ) is given to a discrete- PI regulator to maintain a constant dc-link voltage under varying generation and load conditions The dclink voltage error ( )at the sampling instant is given as:
=

The output of discrete-PI regulator at nth sampling instant is expressed as

= () +( ) +

At simulation time t=1.5sec another load is being switched to phase R, which will increase the unbalance among the three phases and inverter output will be switched in such a way that neutral current will be reduced to zero and also tries to make current in phase with voltage, thereby acting as an active power factor correction. Below shows the subsystem that will be acting as Renewable energy source. It consists of a solar panel and a buck converter. The buck converter is switched on the basis of Perturbation and Observe Algorithm to obtain Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT).

Fig. 7. Simulink Model.

As the three phase load is inductive in nature as soon as solar cells starts providing energy, it will be connected through the inverter as if to make the grid to work at unity power factor. At 0.5sec a voltage will be supplied from the solar cell which will be increased linearly by buck converter so as to make it work by tacking its maximum power point condition. Perturbation and Observe algorithm is being used for this, in which a small change in switching cycle is made and observes the changes due to it. If it is favourable towards the working, that is, if the power is increasing switching sequence continues to increase until the maximum power condition is obtained. At simulation time t=1sec, an inductive load is being applied to the Yphase through a breaker. This makes the Yphase heavily loaded in comparison with the other phases, thus resulting in the creation of an unbalanced load distribution. This will also result in flow of neutral current. A sudden hike in both voltage and can be observed in this time at below graph which shows the phase voltages and currents of each phase.

Fig. 9. Renewable Energy Source Converter Output.

Fig. shows the output waveform of inverter whose output will be in synchronous with grid voltage, which is being obtained by switching it in accordance with output obtained from a PLL unit. It can be clearly viewed from the output waveform that up to 0.75sec the output voltage of inverter is zero, from there it will start rising in accordance with the increase in voltage from solar cell. Later it will be having a voltage near to 420, were solar panel will be obtaining its maximum power point. Fig.11 shows the three phase voltage and the neutral current. Up to 0.5sec were the whole loads are balanced zero neutral flows through the system. With the increase in loads neutral current starts flowing which is being reduced by proper switching of inverter. At 1sec and 1.5 sec there is an increase in neutral current due to sudden switching of unbalanced load, which will be reduced with time by proper switching of leg4 in inverter.

Fig. 8. Grid Phase voltages and currents.

Fig. 10. Grid Three Phase Voltage with Neutral Current.

IV.CONCLUSION This paper presented a control of an existing grid interfacing inverter to improve the quality of power at PCC for a 3-phase 4-wireDGsystem by the use of solar power. It has been shown that the grid-interfacing inverter can be effectively utilized for power conditioning without affecting its normal operation of real power transfer. The grid-interfacing inverter with the proposed approach can be utilized to: i) inject real power generated from RES to the grid, and/or, ii) operate as a shunt Active Power Filter (APF). This approach thus eliminates the need for additional power conditioning equipment to improve the quality of power at PCC. Extensive MATLAB/Simulink simulation has validated the proposed approach and has shown that the grid-interfacing inverter can be utilized as a multi-function device.

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