Synopsis

of the PhD thesis entitled

Interface Circuits and Controllers for Eective Utilization of Solar Photovoltaics

Proposed to be submitted in partial fulllment of the requirements

of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sandeep Anand (Roll No: 08407009) Supervisor: Prof. B. G. Fernandes

Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai - 400 076.

Introduction
Depleting fossil fuels, increasing energy demand and concern over climate change due to CO2 emissions motivate the use of renewable sources for power generation. Among these sources, solar photovoltaic (PV) is expected to dominate due to its long life of operation, better predictability of solar radiations and continuously decreasing cost of solar PV panels. These panels produce unregulated dc power, which may not be suitable for direct utilization. Hence, power electronic converters are used. This work pertains to these power electronic converters and their control to improve the utilization of solar PV. It focuses on the following two applications: (i) DC Microgrid for remote electrication and (ii) Direct grid feeding solar PV systems. It includes case studies, stability analysis and issues related to the control of dc microgrid. Further, paralleling of dc-dc converters and charge controller for solar PV based dc system are analyzed. In case of direct grid feeding PV system, issues related to string (medium power) and central (high power) inverters are discussed. A high reliability transformer-less string inverter is proposed. Further, for central inverter application, use of a multilevel inverter topology is suggested. Utilization of this inverter for reactive power compensation at night or during low solar radiations is also investigated.

Remote Electrication
Electronics, variable speed drives and LED loads utilize dc voltage for operation. In ac system, supplying these loads from solar PV requires multiple ac-dc and dc-ac conversions. This causes substantial energy wastage before end use. To address this limitation, the use of low voltage dc system is suggested in literature. The key advantages are high eciency and reliability at low cost. The voltage level in a dc system is an important parameter aecting performance and safety of the system. A study on possible voltage levels of a dc system is reported in [1]. However, only cabling / distribution losses are considered. The converter losses are neglected, although they are signicant in a low power system. Also, the eect of renewables and storage elements are not considered. The current work lls this gap by carrying out a study on suitable voltage levels for residential and commercial dc systems. Solar, wind and grid based hybrid system is considered. This study compares the performance of dc systems with dierent voltages to the existing ac system. Figures 1 and 2 show the energy requirements in dierent dc systems as a percentage of that in ac system. Considering low power requirement, safety and eciency, it is concluded that a low voltage system (48V) gives optimal performance in a residential dc system. However, for commercial facilities, a medium voltage level 1

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 400Vdc 325Vdc 230Vdc 120Vdc 48Vdc AC system

Energy from Solar PV Energy from Wind Energy from Grid

Figure 1: Comparison of dc and ac systems for residential application

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 400Vdc 325Vdc 230Vdc 120Vdc 48Vdc AC system

Energy from Solar PV Energy from Wind Energy from Grid

Figure 2: Comparison of dc and ac systems for commercial application

(400V) oers the highest operating eciency. The proposed dc systems oer 15-16% and 10-11% improvement over the conventional ac system in operating eciency for residential and commercial systems respectively. Based on the interconnection topology, remote electrication system is categorized as (i) centralized generation, shown in Figure 3 and (ii) decentralized generation, shown in Figure 4. In centralized generation based dc system, two categories of converters are used (i) Renewable Side Converter (RSC), which interconnects renewable sources to the storage elements and (ii) Storage Side Converter (SSC), which interconnects storage elements to the load bus. The RSC extracts power from renewable sources and supplies that to 2

Solar PV 1

RSC DC Load Bus

Load-1

Load-2

Load-3

Load-4

Solar PV 2

RSC

Storage

SSC

Wind 1

RSC

Figure 3: Centralized dc generation system

Node-1 Source-1 Load-1 i1 iL1 v1

i12 v2 i2 iL2 i14 i3 iL3 i3j v3 i4 iL4

Node-2 Source-2 Load-2

i23

Node-3 Source-3 Load-3

Node-4 Source-4 Load-4

v4

Node-j Source-j Load-j ij iLj vj ijn Node-n vn in iLn Source-n Load-n

Figure 4: Decentralized dc microgrid

the storage element. The control objective of SSC is to regulate the dc load bus voltage at its nominal value. For easy expansion and to improve the reliability of SSC, parallel combination of dc-dc converters is preferred over single dc-dc converter. The requirements for parallel operation of dc-dc converters operating as SSCs are: (i) Load current should be shared equally (in proportion to their power rating) by the converters operating in parallel and (ii) Variation in output voltage should be within the acceptable limits. Use of master-slave and droop controllers is popular for paralleling. Master-slave method requires centralized controller and communication link between converters for operation. Therefore, the limitations of this method are high cost, complex implementation and low

reliability. Droop method does not require communication link between the converters and centralized controller. However, the limitation of conventional droop controller is the trade-o between voltage regulation and current sharing [2,3]. To address this limitation, a modied droop method is reported in [2]. This method utilizes a current set point to overcome the errors in nominal voltages. However, the eect of error in current set point is not analyzed. This error may degrade the performance of the system. Adaptive droop controller, reported in [3] uses rst order tracker to determine the droop coecients. These adaptive droop coecients ensure equal load sharing and low voltage regulation. However, this method requires all converters to start operating at the same instant, which calls for communication among converters. To improve the performance of droop controller, without utilizing communication, a modied droop controller is proposed in this thesis. Circulating current between converters is used to modify nominal voltages such that error between them is reduced. This improves current sharing among converters. The advantage of the proposed method is that, equal current sharing along with low voltage regulation is achieved. Figures 5 and 6 show the experimental results of two converters operating in parallel and controlled using the droop method and the proposed method respectively. Voltage regulation of 2% is achieved in both the schemes. For the proposed scheme, deviation in source current from its ideal value is 4.4%. This value is 18.75% in case of droop method.

Output Voltage Load Current

Source-2 Current

Source-1 Current

Figure 5: Experimental results of two dc-dc converters connected in parallel and controlled using the droop method. Trace-1: Output voltage (10V/div), Load current (2A/div). Trace-2: Source currents (1A/div). X-axis: 50ms/div Objective of RSC shown in Figure 3, is to charge battery using renewable sources. This converter is expected to extract maximum power from the solar PV panels. When the system is partially loaded, excess power ows into battery. If the state of charge (SoC) of battery is high, this power ow increases battery terminal voltage above the 4

Output Voltage Load Current

Source-2 Current

Source-1 Current

Figure 6: Experimental results of two dc-dc converters connected in parallel and controlled using the proposed method. Trace-1: Output voltage (10V/div), Load current (2A/div). Trace-2: Source currents (1A/div). X-axis: 50ms/div gassing voltage, Vg , thereby reducing its life. Furthermore, frequent occurrence of this event can even damage the battery. In order to improve the life of battery, use of a battery current controller to limit the power ow into the battery is suggested in [4]. However, output current controlled dc-dc converter in cascade with solar PV can have instability [5]. Chaing et al. suggest the use of output voltage controller to maintain the battery voltage equal to its maximum value during excess power ow [6]. It is shown in this thesis that output voltage controlled dc-dc converter fed by solar PV may lead to instability. To address this limitation, a charge controller scheme is proposed in this thesis. This scheme ensures that the battery voltage remains below its gassing voltage. Salient features of the proposed scheme are optimal utilization of solar PV and battery capacities without aecting the life of battery. In order to verify the ecacy of the proposed scheme, dc-dc buck converter inter-connecting 48Vnominal battery and 310Wp (105.5Voc , 3.8Asc ) PV array, is simulated on MATLAB/Simulink platform. Results for conventional perturb and observe method and the proposed scheme are given in Figures 7(a) and 7(b) respectively. For perturb and observe method, after the load is turned o, maximum power (310W) is extracted from PV and therefore battery voltage rises to 63V. Gassing voltage of the battery is 57.6V. Prolonged exposure of battery to such high voltage (63V) increases heat and gas dissipation, thereby reducing the life of battery. However, in the proposed scheme, as shown in Figure 7(b), due to excess power ow at t=0.1s, voltage of the battery system momentarily rises to 63V. As the controller detects this high voltage, it reduces the power drawn from PV to 85W. This in turn reduces the battery voltage to 56V within 20ms. Thus, the controller ensures that the battery voltage is maintained below gassing voltage.

Load Current A A

Load Current

Battery Voltage

Battery Voltage

V Solar PV Power

V Solar PV Power

W seconds

W seconds

(a) Perturb and Observe Scheme

(b) Proposed Scheme

Figure 7: Transient response of RSC controlled using (a) perturb and observe scheme, (b) proposed scheme

v1 i1 v2 i2
Gnd-v2 Gnd-i2

Gnd-v1 Gnd-i1

Figure 8: Experimental Results: Transient response of dc microgrid controlled using the droop controller. Trace-1: Source-1 voltage (10V/div) and current (2A/div); Trace-2: Source-2 voltage (10V/div) and current (2A/div); X-axis: 10ms/div In case of decentralized generation based dc system, shown in Figure 4, sources and storage elements are connected to dc microgrid using power electronic converters. Sources and storage elements are expected to supply high quality power to loads. Hierarchy of controllers for microgrid is reported in [7]. In this scheme, central secondary controller is used. This may limit the reliability of the system. In [8] droop controlled, superconducting cables based dc system catering to a small zone is analyzed. Eect of interconnecting 6

v1 i1 v2 i2
Gnd-v2 Gnd-i2

Gnd-v1 Gnd-i1

Figure 9: Experimental Results: Transient response of dc microgrid controlled using the proposed decentralized controller. Trace-1: Source-1 voltage (10V/div) and current (2A/div); Trace-2: Source-2 voltage (10V/div) and current (2A/div); X-axis: 10ms/div cable resistance is neglected. It may be noted that this eect becomes signicant for a low voltage dc system. This leads to high variation in system voltage and deviation in source currents from their scheduled values. To address these limitations, this thesis presents a distributed control suitable for dc microgrid system. As opposed to the conventional hierarchical control approach, it does not require a central controller. The scheme is based on the droop control method together with a decentralized average current sharing technique. The droop control is a local controller which does not require any communication system, achieves low voltage regulation at the cost of current sharing. Moreover, current sharing is adversely aected by the resistance of the interconnecting cables. Therefore, current sharing is hard to achieve when the distance between the sources is considerable. In order to address this limitation another loop has been implemented, which uses low bandwidth digital communication between the sources. It is based on averaging the total current supplied by the sources. To verify the operation of the proposed scheme, a 48Vnominal , two node dc system is developed. Control gains are set to achieve system voltage regulation less than 5%. A step change in load from zero to full-load (8.44A) is initiated. Figures 8 and 9 show the transient results for conventional droop controller and proposed scheme respectively. For both controllers, voltage regulation is less than 5%. Deviation in load sharing for the proposed scheme (6.6%) is much smaller than that for the conventional droop method (35.8%). This conrms the eectiveness of the proposed scheme in reducing the current deviation and achieving almost equal load sharing (in proportion to their scheduled powers).

Grid Feeding Inverters

This part of the work pertains to direct grid feeding solar PV inverters. Issues related to reliability and earth leakage current in string inverters are discussed. A novel CSI based inverter is suggested for this application. Further, for central inverter application, use of multilevel inverter topology is suggested. An open-ended transformer based multilevel circuit for central inverter is proposed. Utilization of this inverter for reactive power compensation at night or during low solar radiations is also investigated. In grid feeding solar PV systems, electricity generated by solar PV is fed directly to the grid. String inverters are low/medium power inverters, typically installed in the vicinity of panels and are exposed to high ambient temperatures. The life of solar PV panels is around 20-25 years. However, string inverters are less reliable and typically have 3-7 years of life. Aluminium electrolytic capacitor (AEC) is responsible for about 60-70% of the total failures [9]. Moreover, life of AEC decreases exponentially with temperature. Therefore, AEC is the weak link in operational life of string inverters, which are exposed to high ambient temperatures. Generally, solar inverters are based on voltage source topology. Considering the size of the capacitor required for these inverters, use of high reliable and expensive capacitors in place of AEC is uneconomical. On the other hand, current source inverter (CSI) circuit requires smaller dc link capacitor, which could be realized by a highly reliable capacitor. Therefore, current source based solar inverters could have longer operational life as compared to voltage source based solar inverters.

Vg-a

Vp2

Figure 10: Experimental results of proposed CSI: phase-a voltage, vga (50V/div) and common mode voltage between -ve dc link and ground, vp2 (50V/div). X-axis: time (10ms/div) The use of 3-phase Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) CSI for solar PV application is suggested in [10]. However, this inverter generates high common mode voltage, which 8

forces common mode earth leakage current. This issue is further explained in [11] and modications to reduce this current is also discussed. The authors suggest the use of common mode choke in the dc link to reduce this current. Further, a modied PWM strategy is also suggested to address this issue. However, these modications do not completely eliminate the leakage current. Therefore, this topology is viable for module inverters (low power), since parasitic capacitance and hence the leakage current is small. However, for string inverter application, wherein various modules are connected to a single inverter, this scheme may inject high leakage current. To address this limitation a modied CSI is proposed in this thesis. Split capacitor arrangement is used to limit the high frequency common mode voltage. In order to highlight the advantage of the proposed scheme, the common mode voltage in this scheme is compared with that of conventional 3-phase PWM CSI. Figures 10 and 11 show the experimentally obtained common mode voltages in the proposed and conventional CSI respectively. Absence of switching frequency components in the proposed scheme conrms the suppression of earth leakage current.

Vg-a

Vp2

Figure 11: Experimental results of conventional CSI: phase-a voltage, vga (50V/div) and common mode voltage between -ve dc link and ground, vp2 (50V/div). X-axis: time (10ms/div) Central solar PV inverters process high power and are installed in a centralized room/location, wherein temperature is regulated. Since, these inverters are used for high power applications, multiple semiconductor devices are connected either in parallel or series to increase the current or voltage handling capability respectively. Considering high stress on the semiconductor devices, use of multilevel inverter topology is preferred over 2-level voltage source inverter (VSI) topology. Use of 3-level Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) inverter for grid feeding solar PV system is suggested in [12]. A 3-phase, 3-level NPC inverter requires 6 power diodes and 12 switches. The layout of these diodes and 9

ea1a2 VAB IA Ia

Figure 12: Experiment results: phase-a inverter voltage, ea1a2 (50V/div), line voltage, VAB (200V/div), phase-A STATCOM current, IA (1A/div) & phase-a VSC current, Ia (5A/div). (X-axis: 5ms/div) switches is complex as compared to that of 2-level VSI. Another issue in central inverters is that a large number of PV modules are connected in series/parallel and are controlled by single maximum power point tracker (MPPT). This might aect the power extracted from PV array during partial shading. Therefore, it is advantageous to have more than one MPPT for each inverter. However, conventional NPC inverter has only one MPPT. To address these issues, a 3-level open-ended transformer based solar inverter is proposed in this thesis. This scheme utilizes two cascaded 3-phase VSCs for operation. Advantages of the proposed circuit over NPC inverter are, simple layout of switches and elimination of additional diodes. Moreover, in the proposed scheme two MPPTs are used. Use of these improves the power extraction during partial shading as compared to that in NPC. Detailed simulation studies are carried out and results conrm good steady state and transient performance of the scheme. Another upcoming use of solar inverters is for reactive power compensation. During low solar radiations, when solar PV power is not available, the inverter can be used to supply reactive power to wind generators or loads. This features is incorporated in the proposed open-ended transformer based solar inverter. 4-level operation of the inverter is achieved using asymmetric dc link voltages. Figure 12 shows experimental waveforms of the proposed 4-level inverter. THD of STATCOM current (IA ) is found to be 5.2%.

Signicant Contributions

1. Case studies are presented to substantiate the claim of high eciency in dc system as compared to ac system. Based on this, optimal dc voltage level is determined 10

for residential and commercial applications. The proposed dc system oers 10-16% improvement in energy eciency over the conventional ac system. 2. A modied droop controller for paralleling of dc-dc converters in centralized generation based dc system is proposed. Circulating current between converters is used to modify nominal voltages. Using this method, almost equal load sharing along with low voltage regulation is achieved. 3. For charging of the battery from PV array, a charge controller scheme is proposed. This scheme ensures that the battery voltage remains below its gassing voltage. Salient features of the proposed scheme are optimal utilization of solar PV and battery capacities without aecting the battery life. 4. Stability of the decentralized dc system (microgrid) is analyzed by identifying the eigenvalues of system matrix. Suciency condition for stable operation of the system is derived. It provides upper bound on droop constants and is useful during planning and designing of dc microgrid. Further, sensitivity of system poles to variation in cable resistance and inductance is identied. It is found that the poles move further inside negative real plane with decrease in inductance or increase in resistance. Moreover, the method proposed in this thesis is applicable to any interconnecting structure of sources and loads. 5. Steady state performance of dc microgrid is analyzed. It is concluded that conventional droop controllers are not eective in achieving equal load sharing (in proportion to their scheduled powers) and low voltage regulation simultaneously. The reasons for this are the errors in nominal voltages and load distribution. Though system with central controller achieves these objectives, it requires communication between the converters and oers less reliability due to single point of failure. To address these limitations, a new distributed controller for dc microgrid is proposed in this thesis. Key advantages are high reliability, low voltage regulation and equal load sharing, utilizing low bandwidth communication. 6. Direct grid feeding solar PV inverters are expected to have high eciency and operational life. In order to meet these requirements a new current source inverter (CSI) is proposed in this thesis. Smaller dc link capacitor, single stage conversion and higher reliability compared to the existing voltage source based solar inverters, are the attractive features of this topology. The proposed CSI scheme suppresses earth leakage current without using isolation transformer, thereby increasing eciency and reducing cost as compared to conventional current source based solar

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inverters. Mathematical model of the system is derived based on which controller for the scheme is designed. 7. A multilevel open-ended transformer based topology is proposed in this thesis. The circuit is suitable for processing high power from solar PV systems. The proposed inverter is also utilized for reactive power compensation, when solar PV power is not available. Reduced component count, simpler layout of switches and smaller dc link capacitor values are the attractive features of the proposed topology over the diode clamped and cascaded multilevel converters.

List of Patent and Publications

The results presented in the thesis have been published as: Patent: P1. S. Anand and B. G. Fernandes, Energy Conversion System Indian Patent Application No. 2912/MUM/2011

Journal Publications, Accepted/Published: J1. S. Anand, B.G. Fernandes and Josep M. Guerrero, Decentralized Controller to Ensure Equal Load Sharing and Low Voltage Regulation in DC Microgrid, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., 2012 (Accepted for publication) J2. S. Anand and B.G. Fernandes, Modied Droop Controller for Paralleling of DCDC Converters in Standalone DC System, IET Power Electronics Journal, 2012 (Accepted for publication) J3. S. Anand, B.G. Fernandes and K. Chatterjee, DC Voltage Controller for Asymmetric Twin Converter Topology Based High Power STATCOM, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., 2012 (Accepted for publication) J4. S. Anand and B.G. Fernandes, Reduced Order Model and Stability Analysis of Low Voltage DC Microgrid, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., 2012 (Accepted for publication)

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Journal Publications, Communicated/Under Review: J5. S. Anand, Saikrishna Kashyap G, Ramu Nair R and B.G. Fernandes, Transformerless Current Source Inverter Topology for Grid Feeding Solar Photovoltaic System, IEEE Trans. Power Electron. (In review)

Conferences: C1. S. Anand and B.G. Fernandes, Multilevel Open-ended Transformer Based Grid Feeding Inverter for Solar Photovoltaic Application, 38th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON2012, Montreal, Canada, Oct. 2012 C2. S. Anand, R.S. Farswan, B. Mangu and B.G. Fernandes, Optimal Charging of Battery using Solar PV in Standalone DC System, 6th IET Power Electronics, Drives and Machines Conference, PEMD2012, Bristol, UK, March 2012 C3. S. Anand and B.G. Fernandes, Steady State Performance Analysis for Load Sharing in DC Distributed Generation System, 10th International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering, EEEIC2011, Rome, May 2011 C4. S. Anand, B.G. Fernandes and K. Chatterjee, A New 4-level Open-Ended Transformer based STATCOM for High Power Applications, 36th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON2010, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Nov. 2010 C5. S. Anand and B.G. Fernandes, Optimal Voltage Level for DC Microgrids, 36th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON2010, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Nov. 2010

References
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[3] A.D. Erdogan and M.T. Aydemir, Application of adaptive droop method to boost converters operating at the output of fuel cells, Int. Conf. on Elect. and Electron. Eng., ELECO09, pp.I-321-325, Bursa, Turkey, Nov. 2009 [4] E. Koutroulis and K. Kalaitzakis, Novel battery charging regulation system for photovoltaic applications, IEE Proceedings - Electric Power Applications, vol.151, no.2, pp. 191- 197, Mar 2004 [5] J.H. Lee, H.S. Bae and B.H. Cho, Resistive Control for a Photovoltaic Battery Charging System Using a Microcontroller, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol.55, no.7, pp.2767-2775, July 2008 [6] S.J. Chiang, Hsin-Jang Shieh and Ming-Chieh Chen, Modeling and Control of PV Charger System With SEPIC Converter, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol.56, no.11, pp.4344-4353, Nov. 2009 [7] J. M. Guerrero, J.C. Vasquez, J. Matas, L.G. de Vicuna and M. Castilla, Hierarchical Control of Droop-Controlled AC and DC Microgrids-A General Approach Toward Standardization, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol.58, no.1, pp.158-172, Jan. 2011 [8] B.K. Johnson, R.H. Lasseter, F.L. Alvarado and R. Adapa, Expandable multiterminal DC systems based on voltage droop, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol.8, no.4, pp.1926-1932, Oct 1993 [9] A. Lahyani, P. Venet, G. Grellet and P.J. Viverge, Failure prediction of electrolytic capacitors during operation of a switchmode power supply, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol.13, no.6, pp.1199-1207, Nov 1998 [10] Yang Chen and K. Smedley, Three-Phase Boost-Type Grid-Connected Inverter, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol.23, no.5, pp.2301-2309, Sept. 2008 [11] B. Sahan, A.N. Vergara, N. Henze, A. Engler and P. Zacharias, A Single-Stage PV Module Integrated Converter Based on a Low-Power Current-Source Inverter, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol.55, no.7, pp.2602-2609, July 2008 [12] R. Gonzalez, E. Gubia, J. Lopez and L. Marroyo, Transformerless Single-Phase Multilevel-Based Photovoltaic Inverter, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol.55, no.7, pp.2694-2702, July 2008

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