Photovoltaic Supported Single Phase Series

Controller for Voltage Compensation

Devesh Jaiswal

Rajesh Gupta, Senior Member, IEEE

Department of Electrical Engineering

M. N. National Institute of Technology Allahabad, India
Email: deveshjaiswal15@gmail.com

Department of Electrical Engineering

M. N. National Institute of Technology Allahabad, India
Email: rajgupta310@gmail.com

Abstract This paper presents a photovoltaic (PV) supported

single-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) based series controller
for compensation of voltage sag/swell in the distribution system.
The control scheme is based on phase advance compensation
technique used for the series controller. Using this technique the
series controller not only compensates the voltage sag/swell but
also controls the flow of power in the grid. The PV supported
series controller also include DC-DC boost converter for
maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and supports the dc link
voltage of the VSI. The proposed controller successfully controls
the flow of power to the grid depending upon the availability of
power from the PV system and requirement by the load.
Simultaneously it also compensates the sag or swell in the
distribution
system.
The
simulation
results
using
PSCAD/EMTDC 4.2 are presented to verify the performance of
the proposed series controller.
Keywords DC-DC converter; maximum power point
tracking (MPPT); photovoltaic (PV); pulse width modulation
(PWM); series controller.

I. INTRODUCTION
The deterioration in quality of power supply in the
distribution system has become a problem over the last decade
due to increasing use of power electronics loads. Any
variation from the normal supply of voltage is called as a
voltage power quality problem. The power quality means the
supply of electrical power to the consumer load at a
predefined specification. Maintaining the voltage at its rated
magnitude and sinusoidal waveshape with minimum
interruptions is a well defined specification of voltage quality.
There are different categories of power quality problems such
as short duration voltage disturbances (sag, swell or
interruption), long duration voltage disturbances (under, over,
sustained interruption), voltage unbalancing, voltage flicker,
voltage harmonics etc. [1].
Among many power quality problems, the short duration
voltage disturbances such as sags and swells are the most
frequent types of disturbances which severely affects the
sensitive loads. There will be change in magnitude of the
supply voltage during the voltage sag and swell. The IEEE
519-1992 and IEEE 1159-1995 describe the voltage sags/
swells as shown in Table I [2].
Table I
Voltage Disturbance
Voltage sag
Voltage swell

Voltage
0.1 0.9 pu
1.1 1.8 pu

Duration
1/2 30 cycles
1/2 30 cycles

For the mitigation of voltage sags and swells the voltage

source converter based compensators are generally used. The
compensator connected in shunt is called distribution static
synchronous shunt compensator (DSTATCOM) and
connected in series is called dynamic voltage restorer (DVR)
[3].
In this paper a photovoltaic (PV) supported single-phase
series controller is proposed to compensate the voltage sag and
swell in the low voltage distribution system. This proposed
series controller is supplied from a PV system with DC-DC
boost converter which acts as a DC voltage source. The reason
for using PV system is that it is renewable in nature and
available abundantly [4].
The single phase series controller injects compensating
voltage through injection transformer to get near sinusoidal
voltage at the load side of the distribution system. The
developed control strategy optimizes the phase angle to
minimize the energy consumption. It is based on the phase
advance compensation technique which gives a phase advance
shift generated by comparing the reference dc voltage with the
measured dc voltage supplied from the PV system. Therefore,
the PV supported series controller not only compensates the
short duration voltage disturbances but also controls the flow
of power from PV system to the grid, providing an effective
solution to increase power quality benefits to the system. The
reference voltage is generated using reference and measured
phase angle with feedback control to produce the switching
pluses for voltage source inverter.
The power generated by the PV system varies with the
change in solar radiation level, temperature, and load demand.
Therefore, the maximum power point tracking using DC-DC
converter extracts the maximum power to support the real
power requirement of the series controller VSI during voltage
disturbances.
II. WORKING PRINCIPLE AND MODELING OF SERIES
CONTROLLER
A. Working Principle
A series controller is a VSI circuit used to inject the
compensating voltage in series with the power distribution
system. The DC side of the series controller is connected to an
energy source or an energy storage device, while its ac side is
connected to the distribution feeder through a single phase
injecting transformer. The series controller consists of power

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circuit and control circuit. The control circuit generates the

switching signal for control of compensating voltage
frequency, magnitude and phase. The controller generates the
necessary switching pattern such that the power circuit injects
required voltage in series supported by the PV power supply
[5]. The power circuit of the series controller incorporates a
photovoltaic array, DC-DC boost converter, high speed
switching pulse width modulation (PWM) inverter and series
injection transformer.
Fig. 2. Block diagram of series controller system.

The above block diagram can be simplified as shown in Fig. 3.

The signal VLref(s) is defined as the reference load voltage.

Fig. 3. Simplified block diagram of series controller system.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of PV supported series controller.

B. Modeling of series controller

The single phase schematic diagram of PV supported
series controller system is shown in Fig. 1.
Where,
= supply voltage of distribution system
Vs
= terminal voltage or PCC voltage
Vt
= load voltage
VL
= inverter output voltage
Vi
= transformer injection voltage
Vinj
Rs, Ls = resistance and inductance of feeder
RL, LL = resistance and inductance of load
Lr, Cr = ripple inductance and capacitance filter
= dc storage capacitor
Cdc
The following equations can be derived for
having transformer with turn ratio of 1:1, and
leakage resistance and reactance.
di
Vi = Lr se + Vinj
dt
VL = Vt + Vinj

ic = Cr

dVinj

dt
ise = ic + iL

By solving the simplified block diagram, the error signal E(s)

can be obtained as shown in equation (6) below.

E ( s) =

VLref ( s )
1+ G ( s)

(6)

Where, E(s) = error signal

G(s) = transfer function between E(s) and VL(s)
= Gp(s). Gc(s)
Gp(s) = plant transfer function
Gc(s) = open loop controller transfer function

controller
negligible
(1)
(2)

After some mathematical manipulation the plant transfer

function Gp(s) can be derived as below.
RL + sLL
(7)
Gp ( s ) =
3
Lr Cr LL s + RL Lr Cr s 2 + ( Lr + LL ) s + RL
An additional PI controller can be used to remove any steady
state error present in the output with respect to the reference
input voltage. The bode plot of closed loop transfer function
[VL(s)/VLref(s)] using system parameter from Table II is shown
in Fig. 4. It shows that the system has large bandwidth for
tracking the reference voltage.

(3)
(4)

diL
(5)
dt
The block diagram of the series controller using above
mentioned equations can be drawn as shown in Fig. 2. Where,
K represents the error amplification gain. The objective of the
controller design is to regulate the load bus voltage against
load disturbances to sinusoidal waveform with low total
harmonic distortions.
VL = RL iL + LL

Fig. 4. Bode plot of transfer function [VL(s)/VLref(s)].

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III. MODELING OF PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEM

The solar photovoltaic (PV) energy has been emerging as an
important energy resource. The solar photovoltaic converts the
solar energy into usable electrical energy in DC form. A
simplified equivalent circuit of a solar cell consists of a
current source in parallel with a diode, a series resistance and
a shunt resistance is shown in Fig. 5. The PV cells are made of
semiconductor p-n junction which releases electrons when
exposed to light. These electrons move across the p-n junction
to generate the voltage potential Vd. The equivalent circuit of
the PV cell is shown in Fig. 5. The input is modeled by the
light generated current source Ipv [6-8]. The output voltage and
current of the PV cell is represented by V and I, respectively.

Fig. 6. PV module with DC-DC boost converter for MPPT.

The Proportional-Integral (PI) controller controls the duty

cycle of the PWM pulses. The duty cycle (D) is defined as the
fraction of the period during which the switch is ON, ranges
between 0 and 1. The output voltage Vo of the converter is
given by,

Vo =
Fig. 5. Simplified equivalent circuit of a solar cell.

The V-I characteristic of the solar cell is given by the

following equation.

q(V + IRs ) V + IRs

I = I pv I o e KT 1

Rsh
Where,
Ipv
Io
q
K
T

Rs
Rsh

Vin
1 D

(9)

Using equation (8) and system parameter shown in Table II,

the P-V characteristics of a solar cell is drawn in Fig. 7.

(8)

= photocurrent
= diode saturation current
= coulomb constant (1.60210-19C)
= Boltzmanns constant (1.38110-23J/K)
= cell temperature in C
= P-N junction ideality factor
= intrinsic series resistance of cell
= intrinsic shunt resistance of cell

In order to extract the maximum amount of power from the

PV system, a maximum power point tracker (MPPT) realized
through a DC-DC converter can be placed between the PV
array and its load. The MPPT ensures that the PV array
operates at its maximum power point despite varying
temperature, insolation, and load [9]. Many MPPT algorithms
have been proposed in the literature such as the Perturb and
Observe (P&O) method [8, 9], Incremental Conductance
(INC) method [8] etc. The algorithm used in this paper is
based on the Incremental Conductance (INC) method which
has the advantage over the P&O method that it has minimal
oscillation around the MPP. The scheme is based on the slope
of the PV array power curve. Fig. 6 shows the PV module
with DC-DC boost converter for MPPT.

Fig. 7. P-V characteristic of solar cell at 25oC temperature and 1000 W/m2
insolation.

IV. REFERENCE VOLTAGE EXTRACTION

The reference generation scheme and control strategy used
for series controller is shown in Fig. 8. The sudden change in
magnitude of the supply voltage causes the voltage
disturbances such as sag/swell. To inject the compensating
series voltage with suitable phase shift from the nominal
value, a reference phase angle is generated by using a
feedback control loop. The error between the supply and the
reference is regulated to zero.
To obtain the phase angle of the supply voltage, the rated
angular frequency (2f) of the supply voltage is integrated and
reset by a resettable integrator after each cycle of the supply
voltage. The reset signal is obtained by passing the supply
voltage through a zero crossing point detector and limiter
which also detects positive gradient zero crossing point.
Initially an arbitrary reference phase angle is generated and by

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using a feedback control loop, the error between the supply

and reference phase angle is fed to the low pass filter and PI
controller, so as to regulate the error to zero. At steady state,
the phase angle of the measured voltage is tracked and finally
synchronized with the phase angle of the reference voltage. A
simple comparator is also used to calculate the angle error.
Now, the reference load voltage is generated by advancing
the phase angle of the reference voltage with respect to the
grid voltage. To generate the phase angle , the reference dc
voltage Vdc_ref is compared with the measured dc voltage Vdc
supplied from the PV system and fed to a PI controller and
limiter. Once the reference voltage is generated, the injected
voltage is calculated by subtracting the measured supply
voltage from reference voltage and finally compared with a
triangular waveform leading to high switching frequency of 5
kHz. The resulting signal generates the switching pulses for
the voltage source inverter.

Fig. 8. Control strategy for single phase series controller.

The proposed control strategy is based on the phase advance

compensation method. In this method, the injected voltage
leads the supply voltage. It is observed that the variation in
phase advance angle depends upon the photovoltaic
generated power. The injected active power increases with
increase in the phase advance angle . If is further increased,
the injected voltage increases, and the power supplied from
the source decreases. Therefore, the proposed control strategy
also controls the flow of power to the grid along with
compensation of voltage disturbances.

single phase series injection transformer

Leakage reactance of transformer
DC link capacitance (Cdc)
Common DC link voltage (Vdc)
No. of modules connected in series / array
No. of module strings in parallel / array
No. of cells connected in series / module
No. of cell strings in parallel / module
Reference irradiation (W/m2)
Reference cell temperature (OC)
PV array short circuit current (A)
PV array open circuit voltage (V)
Initial value of Vmpp (V)

The simulations are carried out under different loading

conditions. This includes linear load with combination of
resistive and inductive parts at a 0.8 power factor and nonlinear load of diode bridge rectifier with resistance and
capacitance connected in parallel. The sag and swell in the
supply voltage is generated from the source side. In a case
considered a voltage sag of 50% is introduced in the supply
voltage at t = 5.0 sec which lasts for 0.10 sec and then a
voltage swell of 150% is introduced at t = 5.20 sec for the
same duration of five cycles.
A. Performance during voltage sag/swell having linear load
The system response for linear load with combination of
resistance and inductance is shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen
that the sag and swell has no impact on the load voltage
because it is compensated by the series controller. The figure
also shows the DC link voltage and the active power injected
by the series controller to compensate the voltage sag and
swell. Fig. 9 also shows the supply current, injected voltage,
load voltage, dc link voltage, and active power injected by the
series controller.

V. SIMULATION RESULTS
The simulation is carried out by using power system
simulator PSCAD/EMTDC 4.2. The system parameters
considered in the simulation are given in the Table II. To
evaluate the performance of the PV supported series controller
a simple distributed network is simulated. A low pass LC filter
is used to filter out the switching harmonics. A PWM
controller is used to generate the switching pulses for the VSI.
Table II
System Parameters
Parameters
Source voltage (L-G)
Source resistance (Rs)
Load: linear
Non-linear
Filter: inductance (Lr), Capacitance (Cr)

10KVA, 240V/240V
0.001 pu
1000 F
1000 V
20
20
11
14
1000
25
700
180
135

Numerical value
220V (rms), 50 Hz
0.01
RL=80 ,LL=0.191 H
RL=60, CL= 20F
0.2 mH, 50 F

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Fig. 9. Compensation of sag and swell by series controller for linear load (a)
Supply voltgae, (b) supply current, (c) injected voltage, (d) load voltgae, (e)
dc link voltage, (f) injected active power.

B. Performance during voltage sag/swell with non-linear

load
The system response has been obtained for the system with
non linear load of diode bridge rectifier with resistance and
capacitance connected in parallel, is shown in Fig. 10. It can
be seen that the sag and swell has very small impact on the
load voltage because it is compensated by the series controller.
Figure also shows the supply current, injected voltage, load
voltage, dc link voltage, and active power injected by the
series controller to compensate the voltage sag and swell.

Fig. 10. Compensation of sag/swell by series controller for non-linear load (a)
Supply voltgae, (b) supply current, (c) injected voltage, (d) load voltgae, (e)
dc link voltage, (f) injected active power.

C. Performance with full supply voltage and Interruption

Here, it is considered that the full supply is coming without
any disturbances for the duration from t =0 to 4 sec and after
that the supply voltage drops to 0 V (interruption) due to

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sudden short circuit fault as shown in Fig. 11. During pre-fault

condition the series controller maintains the phase advance
angle to 180o corresponding to available photovoltaic solar
power which is more than the load requirement. It injects the
active power requirement of the load and remaining power it
feeds to the supply which is shown negative in Fig. 12.
Therefore the total power supplied by the PV system is
distributed between the load and the source. In post-fault
condition after t = 4 sec, the series controller maintains to
-180o and injects the active power equal to the power required
by the load only. The remaining power generated by the PV in
this situation is assumed to be absorbed locally at the DC side
of the series controller.

disturbances (sag/swell) and controls the flow of power to the

grid depending upon the availability from the PV system and
requirement by the load.

Fig. 12. Load active power, injected active power and supply active power.

REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]

[4]
[5]

[6]

[7]
Fig. 11. (a) Supply voltage, injected voltage, load voltage, (b) phase advance
angle , (c) dc link voltage during normal and voltage interruption.

VI. CONCLUSIONS
This paper proposed a control strategy for PV supported
single phase series controller which mitigates the voltage sag
and swell at the load side under different load conditions and
also injects the active power. The developed control strategy
plays an intelligent role to compensate the voltage

[8]
[9]

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