Proceedings of Third Biennial National Conference, NCNTE- 2012, Feb 24-25

Design and Simulation of three phase Inverter for grid

connected Photovoltic systems
Miss. Sangita R Nandurkar 1, Mrs. Mini Rajeev 2
Department of Electrical Engineering
Fr.C.Rodrigues Institute of Technology,
Vashi, Navi Mumbai, India
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Grid connected photovoltaic (PV) systems feed II. DEMANDS AND STANDARDS
electricity directly to the electrical network operating parallel to
the conventional source. This paper deals with design and In order to connect an inverter to the grid, the generated
simulation of a three phase inverter in MATLAB SIMULINK power has to comply with the standards given by utility
environment which can be a part of photovoltaic grid connected companies. The standards like IEEE1547, IEC61727 &
systems. The converter used is a Voltage source inverter (VSI) ENC61000-3-2 deals with issues like power quality, detection
which is controlled using synchronous d-q reference frame to of islanding operation, amount of injected current into grid,
inject a controlled current into the grid. Phase lock loop (PLL) is total harmonic distortion (THD) etc. IEEE1547 & IEC61727
used to lock grid frequency and phase. The design of low pass standard puts the limitation on maximum amount of injected
filter used at the inverter output to remove the high frequency current into the grids. This limits are very small (0.5% and 1%
ripple is also discussed and the obtained simulation results are of rated output currents) and such small values are very
presented. difficult to measure. This problem can be resolved by
introducing a line frequency transformer between inverter and
Keywords- VSI Inverter, PLL, d-q refrance frame, grid grid [1]. Assuming that both grid voltage and grid current
connected system. contain only fundamental components and they are in phase
the instantaneous power (pgrid) injected into the grid is given by
I. INTRODUCTION (1).

The continuously increasing energy consumption, p grid  2  Pgrid  Sin 2 ( grid  t )

overloads the distribution grids by creating problems such as (1)
outages, grid instability, deterioration of power quality, power
security etc. To balance the energy demand and generation, Where P grid is the average power injected into the grid, ωgrid
renewable energy resources such as Photovoltaic (PV), Wind, is the angular frequency and t is the time [1].Table I. deals with
and Biomass could be a good solution. Among these, solar different standards and THD limits of connecting 10KW and
energy is considered to be one of the most useful sources 30 KW to the grid.
because it is free, abundant, pollution free and maintenance
free. Since the generated voltage from PV is DC, we need
inverter for converting DC voltage from PV to AC before TABLE I. STANDARDS OF INTERCONNECTION OF PV SYSTEM
connecting it to grid. Grid is a voltage source of infinite TO THE GRID
capability. The output voltage and frequency of inverter should
be same as that of grid frequency and voltage. The output of Issues IEC61727 IEE1547
grid connected inverter can be controlled as a voltage or
current source and pulse width modulated (PWM) voltage Nominal
10KW 30KW
Power
source inverters (VSI) are most widely use in PV systems.
The work done related to PV grid connected systems Harmonics THD Harmonics THD
published so far [6]-[7] reveals how an inverter should be
designed and output should be synchronized with the grid. Harmonis 3-9 4% 3-9 4%
Different control strategy to control grid current using p-q currents 11-15 2% 11-15 2%
theory and d-q theory with phase lock loop (PLL) control has Limits 17-21 1.5% 17-21 1.5%
been discussed in those papers. 23-33 0.6% 23-33 0.6%
(>)35 0.3%
The work presented here is about the simulation of a VSI
where the output current of inverter is controlled in Maximum
synchronously rotating d-q reference frame. PLL is used to 5.0% 5.0%
current THD
synchronize grid with PV. The relevant standards and design of
the entire system, simulink models and results obtained are
presented in the subsequent sections.

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Proceedings of Third Biennial National Conference, NCNTE- 2012, Feb 24-25

III. DESIGN DETAILS OF THE SYSTEM Typically the ripple current can be chosen as 10% - 15% of
rated current. Considering 10% ripple at the rated current the
A. Inverter and Transformer
designed value of inductor (L) in the system [3]-[4] is given
by (2)
3 phase Grid
Inverter Filter Transformer ΔiLmax = * Vdc / L* fs (2)
.
Vabc The capacitor C is designed based on reactive power supplied
Iabc
by the capacitor at fundamental frequency. In this design
PLL reactive power is chosen as 15% of the rated power [3] is given
dq
by (3)
PWM
abc
C = 15%* P rated / 3*2 π f * V
2
θ rated (3)
Fig.1 Block diagram of the system
C. Control Stratergy
The block diagram of the grid connected inverter system is The control strategy applied for inverter consists of two control
given in Fig.1. The three phase full bridge inverter topology is loops. Usually there is a fast inner control loop which controls
the most widely used configuration in three phase systems. The grid current and an external voltage loop which control dc link
inverter selected is current controlled voltage source inverter voltage. The current control loop is responsible for power
that has an amplitude modulation index (ma) of 0.9. quality issues like low THD and good power factor, whereas
MOSFETS are used as the switching element which is operated voltage control loop balances the power flow in the system [5].
at a frequency of 20 KHz. Bi-polar PWM technique is used in Synchronous reference frame control also called d-q control
which switches in each pair are turned ON and OFF uses a reference frame transformation abc to dq which
simultaneously and output voltage varies between –Vdc and transforms the grid current and voltages into d-q frame. The
+Vdc, where Vdc is the input voltage of inverter which is transformed voltage detects phase and frequency of grid,
considered as battery as shown in block diagram. The output whereas transformed current controls the grid current. Thus the
of each leg depends only on input voltage and switch status and control variables becomes dc values, hence filtering and
is independent of load current. The output voltage required is controlling becomes easier [6].
415V rms at the grid.
Transformer steps up the inverter output voltage. Besides
PWM
this, it provides isolation and prevents injection of dc current in Grid
Inverter
to the grid Generally delta-star transformer configuration is
used in grid connected system because the third harmonic will
get circulated in delta and does not enter in the grid. The Vdc PLL
Iabc Vabc
design is for feeding 1KW power generated by PV to grid. This
means transformer should provide 1KW power to the grid. So abc
abc
transformer rating is selected as 1250VA with a secondary
voltage of 415 volt (L-L). dq dq
θ θ
B. LC Fiter
Output voltage wave is synchronized with the grid voltage. Id Iq
So the PWM inverter will inject ripple current in to the
grid. The output LC filter is connected to remove high PI
switching frequency components from output current of Iq*= 0
inverter[2].The filter is designed taking into account the Id*
following parameters for the grid and inverter as shown in
Vdc*
Table II. The value of L is design based on current ripple. PI PI
Smaller ripple results in lower switching and conduction
losses. Vd* Vq*
TABLE II. DESIGN PARAMETERS
dq PWM
Inverter
Grid line voltage V L-L=415V
abc
Grid phase voltage Vph=240 V
DC source voltage Vdc= 250V θ Vabc*
Fig.2 General structure for synchronous rotating d-q reference frame
Output power fed to grid Pn =1000 W
control.
Grid Frequency f = 50 Hz
Switching frequency fs= 20 KHz The schematic of the d-q control is shown in Fig.2. The DC
link voltage is actually fed from PV. For the simulation, battery

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Proceedings of Third Biennial National Conference, NCNTE- 2012, Feb 24-25

is used as input of inverter. The reference for active current Continuous

control is set by DC link voltage, whereas reactive power powergui

control reference is set to zero, as reactive power control is not 1 a

qs
Va
done here. If reactive power has to be controlled a reference 2 b
Vqe_de
Vq_d
must be set in the system for that also. Vb
3
c
ds
we

Vc

D. Phase lock loop(PLL) abc -qs ds

v s_d 1
v _de Error we s

Grid synchronizations plays important role for grid v s_q

Product2

connected systems. It synchronizes the output frequency and sin_e

v _qe
constant

phase of grid voltage with grid current using different cos_e

0 PI Controller

transformation. Different methods to extract phase angle have dq/ de -qe

-1
1

been developed and presented in many papers up to now [8]- cos Gain
s

Product3
[11] PLL techniques causes one signal to track another one. It
keeps an output signal synchronized with a reference input sin
Harmonic Oscillator

signal in frequency and phase. In three phase grid connected

system PLL can be implemented using the d-q transformation Fig.4 PLL model
and with a proper design of loop filter. 350

300

Fig.3 shows the block diagram of three phase PLL, where 250

Vabc is the sensed grid voltage which is transformed in to DC

Frequency(radians)
200

components using coordinate transformation abc-dq and the 150

PLL gets locked by setting Vd* to zero. The loop filter PI is a 100

low pass filter. It is used to suppress high frequency component 50

and provide DC controlled signal to voltage controlled 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time
1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

oscillator (VCO) which acts as an integrator. The output of the Fig.5 Output frequency obtained from PLL
PI controller is the inverter output frequency that is integrated
to obtain inverter phase angle θ. When the difference between
SIn& Cos theat genrate by PLL
1

0.8

grid phase angle and inverter phase angle is reduced to zero 0.6

PLL becomes active which results in synchronously rotating 0.4

Sine & Cosine theat

0.2

voltages Vd = 0 and Vq gives magnitude of grid voltage. 0

-0.2

-0.4

-0.6

-0.8

-1
0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2
Time

VCO
Vd*= 0 θ Fig.6 Sin & Cos wave generated by PLL
PI ∫ 600
Refrance grid voltage
PLL output voltage

400

Vd 200
Synchronised output voltages

dq Vabc
Vq
-200

αβ
αβ
-400

-600
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2

abc Time

Fig.7 Synchronization between reference grid voltage & PLL output

voltage

The inverter output frequency locked by PLL is 314 rad/sec

Fig.3 General structure of three phase d-q PLL which is 50 Hz as shown in Fig.5.The simulation results of
PLL shows that when grid phase angle equals to inverter phase
angle, the error at the output of phase detector becomes zero
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS and equals to reference Vd* and lock is set by PLL. The output
controlled signal from PI regulator to VCO generates the Sinθ
and Cosθ required for abc-dq and dq- abc transformation in
Based on the design, simulation of the entire system is control loop as shown in Fig.6. PI controller gain was varied to
done in Simulink. PLL model is shown in Fig.4 and the entire obtain zero phase error and to detect accurate inverter phase
system model is shown in Fig.8. PLL is developed for grid angle. Synchronization between output of inverter phase and
voltage of 415 V rms. grid phase angle is achieved by locking PLL not only at zero

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Proceedings of Third Biennial National Conference, NCNTE- 2012, Feb 24-25

crossing but at every instant of time between 0 to 2π. The FFT analysis of output current of inverter shows that
Synchronization between rotating reference frame PLL output THD is very low and obtained simulation results is 1.78%.
voltage and grid voltages is shown in Fig.7. The abc to dq
current transformation results in dc component of Id and Iq V. CONCLUSION
components. The Id component controls the active current The design of the system is carried out for feeding 1KW
necessary to feed active power to grid. The DC magnitude of Id power to the grid The Inverter is controlled in order to feed
obtained in simulation is approximately equal to 2.42 Ampere. active power to the grid, using synchronous d-q transformation.
The reference voltages obtained by inverse transformation are PLL is used to lock grid frequency and phase. The phase
compared with triangular wave which generates PWM signal detection part of PLL is properly done by using dq
required by inverter. In closed loop current control of inverter, transformation in the three phase system.
the active power fed by inverter to grid is 1000 Watt as shown
in Fig.10.The voltage at the output of inverter remains always The FFT analysis of the inverter output current shows that
constant and obtained magnitude in simulation is 415*√2 the THD is within limits and the controlled injected current
which is 586.89Volt(peak to peak) as shown in Fig.9. generates three phase balance current which controls power at
INVERTER connected to grid with transformer & PLL the output of the transformer.
Continuous

Out1 [g1]
[Va]
powergui To simulate the actual grid connected PV system, the PV
Out2 [g2]
[Vb]
Va Pll output

Vb Sin
PLL O/P

[Sin]
model, dc to dc converter model and the control of the dc to dc
Out3 [g3]
Vc Cos [Cos]
converter should be included in place of the battery source.
[Vc]
Out4 [g4]
PLL subsystem [Va]

Out5 [g5]

[g6]
[Vb] REFERENCES
Out6

PWM subsystem [Vc]

Inverter subsytem

Conn2 A
Vabc Voltag/currnt o/p
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+v e a A Iabc
A Vabc
transformer o/p, V/I
single phase grid connected inverter for photovoltaic modules,‖ IEEE
B a A a
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Iabc Vabc Grid V/I
A
Conn5 c C b B b B a
Iabc

[2] Milan Pradanovic& Timothy Green, ―Control and filter design of three
Conn4
C A A
LC Filter b B B
c C c B a
star connected C C

phase inverter for high power quality grid connection, ― IEEE

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c
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Vdcref PI
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[Vdref]
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Fig.8 Model of inverter connected to grid
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Time in seconds

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200

edition, India Willy 2010.pp.185-248

0
0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
Time

Fig .10 Average active power fed to grid is 1000 Watt

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