Implementation of Three-phase Gird Connected

Inverter for Photovoltaic Solar Power

Generation System
N. A. Rahim and Saad Mekhilef
Power Electronics Research Laboratory, Dept Of Electrical Engineering
University Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Email saadG3tk um edu my

Abstract--Detailed analysis, simulation and hardware results A. Grid Connected PVSystem

of a new solar photovoltaic inverter configuration interconnected
to the grid are presented. From the simulation and experimental Grid-connected PV systems can vary greatly in size, but
results it is confirmed that the harmonic distortion of the output all consist of solar modules, inverters (which convert the DC
current waveform of the inverter fed to the grid is within the output of the solar modules into AC electricity), and other
stipulated limits laid down by the utility companies. To hawest components such as wiring and module mounting structures.
the vast solar energy, it would be desirable if the energy Some of the first grid-connected systems consisted of several
conversion units are simple, reliable, and of low cost and high hundred kilowatts of PV modules layed out in a large
efficiency. High efficiency can be achieved by the use of all the
centralized array, which fed power into the local high voltage
power generated for the unit and even contribute to the gird
while the energy is not used.
electricity network in much the same way as a large thermal
Index Terms-Grid connec'ed, Inverter, Photovoltaic, Solar generator [3]. In recent years, small rooftop mounted systems
energy have become increasingly popular, as improved technology
has enabled the advantages of such systems to be exploited. It
I. INTRODLeTION is now becoming increasingly common for homeowners to
install a small PV system on their roof to supply some or all of
, As people are much concerned with the fossil fuel their electricity needs.
exhaustion and the environmental problems caused by the
conventional power generation, renewable energy sources and
among them photovoltaic panels and wind-gmerators are now
widely used. Photovoltaic sources are used mday in many
applications such as battery charging, water pumping, home
power supply, swimming-pool heating systems, satellite
power systems etc. They have the advantage of being
maintenance and pollution-free but their installation cost is
high and, in most applications, they require a pawer
conditioner (dcldc or dclac converter) for load interface. Since
PV modules still have relatively low conversion efficiency, the
overall system cost can be reduced using high efficiency
Figurel. Block Diagram of a Typical PV-Utility Grid Connected
power [I].
Power supply reliability and power quality have become
For a small grid-connected rooftop PV system, the power
important issues for all kind of power electronics systems
produced by the array during the day can be used to supply
including photovoltaic systems. Interconnecting a photovoltaic
local loads, with the excess energy fed into the local grid for
system with utility, it is necessary that the PV system should
use by other custo'mers. At night, the local loads are simply
meet the harmonic standard and the active power supply
supplied by the grid. If the PV system is large enough, it can
requirement. Several utility connected photovoltaic systems
supply more energy into the grid than is used by local loads.
have been proposed. Among these systems, the most common
Instead of receiving a bill every month, the customer would
type is the parallel running PV system with bi-directional
then receive a cheque frem their utility for generating this
power flow to provide unity power factor on the utility line. In
electricity [I-31.
this system as shown in figurel, an inverter connected to the
photovoltaic array supplies the power to the utility [2].
B. I- V C U ~ V ~ S
Photovoltaic power can be generated for houses,
intermediate size commercial installations or large control The most comprehensive test of a PV array is the
power stations especially in development countries. In a measurement of the I-V curve. This curve shows the behavior
residential photovoltaic system of a few kilowatts in size, the of the PV system under all load conditions from open circuit
array is mounted on the top of the roof taking into to short circuit. I-V curves can be taken of any portion of an
consideration the most suitable angle for maximum utilisation array provided there is electrical access, an I-V curve of the
of the light intensity and temperature. entire array will give the peak power rating of the array. The I-

O-7803-7459-2/02/$17.00O 2002 IEEE - 570 -

V curve is simply a plot of array current versus voltage. Figure the load current waveform. It should not be susceptible to the
2 illustrates the usefulness of an I-V curve. Only the short load variations and therefore its overall performance must be
circuit current or open circuit voltage was measured. superior over conventional type of PWM inverter.
I-V curve is generated by connecting the array to a
variable load. As the resistance is varied from zero to infinity,
current and voltage data pairs are recorded and plotted to
produce I-V curve. The solar cell characteristics influence the
inverter operation and the control system; therefore these will
be briefly reviewed in this paper. Some typical array I-V
curves at different light‘ intensity but constant temperature as
shown in figure 2, the maximum power points for the
respective I-V characteristics are depicted by points A, B, C
and D on the curves, the inverter which is connected at the
solar cell module terminal can be represented by an equivalent
resistive load at static condition as shown in figure 1. The
intersection of the load line with conductance slope, and the I-
V characteristic curves defines the operating point and the
corresponding DC power absorbed by the inverter [5-61.

Figure 3 Top level Schematic diagram of PWM generator in Xilinx FPGA

The top level Xilinx schematic diagram is shown in figure

3. The carrier wave is compared with .the multiplied
modulating signal from the look-up table. The data of the look
up table are stored in the internal ROM unit. The external
multiplicand and the stored data will determine the modulation
index of the PWM. The data stored in the look-up table
Figure 2. I-V curve (ROM) consists of 60 data from the red phase and another 61
data from the blue phase. Part of yellow phase is derived using
Observing the cell characteristic, ,it can be seen that the addition of red and blue phases. Selector unit and multiplexer
region of the I-V curves above the maximum power point is are used to select the required signal to the appropriate channel
defined as a constant current region. In the case of operation, as to form a proper PWM output pattern at the output
hardly any large transient is impressed on the system because terminals.
of the gradual change of the light intensity and the temperature
parameters. In the case of shadow being casted by an object or 111. INVERTER CONFIGURATION
by a cloud over the cell module, the voltage generated by each Figure 4 shows the schematic description of a PV utility-
set of solar cell modules varies. This may affect the load interactive system. The power condition system (PCS) or the
conditions. power inverter is primarily responsible for converting the DC
PV power into utility compatible AC power and for
II.FPGA PWM INVERTER synchronizing and transferring that AC power safely into the
FPGA is a Programmable Logic Device developed by utility grid.
Xilinx, Inc. It comprises of thousand of logic gates. Some of Atypical utility interactive photovoltaic inverter has to
them combined together to form a Configurable Logic Block satisfy a number of design characteristics:
(CLB). CLB simplifies higher-level circuit design. Gates 1) The photovoltaic system voltage should not exceed 1OOV.
interconnections using software are defined through S U M or Otherwise, insulation failure may occur and the safety and
ROM. This provides flexibility to modify the designed circuit protection of a person will be in danger
without altering the hardware part. Concurrent operation, less 2) The current harmonic distorti.on fed to the grid by the
hardware, easy and fast circuit modification, comparatively solar photovoltaic utility interactive inverter should not exceed
low cost for a complex circuitry and rapid prototyping make it the fimit permitted by the public utility laws
as the most favourable choice for prototyping an ASIC. 3) Care should be taken to control the radio interference
The DC power available at the output of the PV array is generated due to high frequency switching devices in the
converted to AC power using Pulse width modulated (PWM) inverter
inverter generated using FPGA Xilinx. The PWM signal used 4) The solar photovoltaic plant should be disconnected from
to switch the power IGBT’s. The inverter under consideration the grid at times of too low insulation
is capable of minimizing the level of the harmonic content of

- 571 -
5) The inverter should be equipped with a maximum power
point tracker to be able to get the maximum power possible .. ..I " " I ".." l " " I.." " . . " .".I " " I ".." l ' " ' I.." " . .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . . . t . . -

from the photovoltaic generator at any given time

6 ) .During the power failure, an isolator should disconnect
the photovoltaic inverter from the gird and connect it to an

# :, ,I
. . . .

I,,,#
emergency load.
I .

............
. I

. . .
..............
. . .
I . .

Sotar Arrays

-A-
DCloc Commr Powar l ~ m i
b

# ............................................
f , / / , . , , , / 1
,,,,, t , , , f , , , ; , , , a . ; a ,,,, , , , /

. . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .,. . . . ... . . . ..
t
.. .. .. .. . .

............................................
. , *
.
.
.
.
.
. . .
.
.
.
f .

.. .. .* . ,
. I . .

. . . <
. . .

Figure 6 . Output Current of the inverter without low pass filter and a
50Hz clock

1-7
I

Figure 4.Proposed Photovoltaic utility-interactive system scheme . . . " . . . . . . . i" .' . . . . . . . I .... ;.,..

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

A prototype of three-phase grid connected inverter has
been developed using the above described method and tested
in the laboratory. Experimental results have been chosen to
show the effectiveness of the proposed configuration. Figure 5
shows the three-phase PWM inverter applied to the six
switches of the inverter scheme whereas figure 6 show!<the
output waveform current before including the low pass filter it
is seen that the output current of the inverter has a sinusoidal
shape with frequency of 50Hz.Figure 7 shows the input DC
current of the inverter and figure 8 shows the three phase
output current of the inverter whereas Figure 9 shows the
harmonic spectrum of the output current at the inverter side Figure 7. Input Dc current of the inverter
with filter and figure 10 shows a photograph of the three-phase
inverter and Xilinx XC4008E connected through driver circuit.

Figure 8. Three-phase output current of the inverter

Figure 5. Three phase PWM inverter

- 572 -
 , : ............. .........................
j VI. References

o,75
.1i
; .......................... ;........................

j
:.. .................
. .
..:................. ...I........................
E. Koutroulis, and K. Kalaitzakis “Development of a microcontroller-
based photovoltaic maximum power point tracking control’ system”
IEEE Trans. Power Electronics, Vol. 16, No.1, pp.46-54, January 2001..
Clinton Slabbert, M. Malengret “Grid connectedkolar water pump for
rural areas”ISIE’98 International Symposium on Industrial Electronics,
11. I “<I .............. j .................... 1...................... ...................... j ................... Vol. 1 pp 3 1-34, 1989
S. Kim, G. Yoo, J. Song, “A bifunctional utility connected photovoltaic
system with power factor correction and U.P.S facility” 25Ih PVSC, May
13-17, Washington D.C, 1996; pp. 1363-1368.
0. Wasynczuk, ‘“Modelling and dynamic performance of a line-
commutated photovoltaic inverter system”
IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, September 1989, Vol. 4 No. 3,
pp. 337-343.
Emil S. “Inverters for utility interactive photovoltaic power plants”
0 20 40 60 80 IO0 Electrotechnical Conference, 1989. Proceedings. ‘Integrating Research,
b Industry and Education in Energy and Communication Engineering’,
MELECON ‘89 Lisbon, Portugal. April 11-13, pp.16-20.
Figure 9 Harmonic spectrum of the output current with low pass filter El-Shibini, M.A.; Rakha, H.H. “Maximum power point tracking
technique” Electrotechnical Conference, 1989. Proceedings. ‘Integrating
Research, Industry and Education in Energy and Communication
Engineering’,MELECON ‘89 Lisbon, Portugal. April 11-13, pp.21-24

Saad Mekhilef received the B. Eng.(l“ class)

degree in electrical engineering from University
of Setif in 1994, and Master of Engineering
science from university of Malaya in 1998.
After graduation, he joined Power electronics
research laboratory at Department of electrical
engineering, University of Malaya as a
Research Engineer. He is currently working
with Dept. of Electrical Eng. as Lecturer, Mr.
Saad is actively involved in industrial
consultancy, for major corporations in the power electronics projects.

Nasrudin Abd. Rahim was born in Johore,

Malaysia, on November 17, 1960. He received
the BSc. (Hons) and, MSc. degree from
University of Strathclyde in I984 and I987 and
the Ph.D. degree.from Heriot-Watt University
in 1995. He is presently a Lecturer with the
Department of Electrical Engineering,
Universiti Malaya Malaysia. His research
Figure I O : Three-phase inverter and Xilinx XC4008E connected through interests: include power electronics, real-time
driver circuit control system, and electrical drives.

V. CONCLUSION
The results indicates that the inverter under consideration
has an advantage that small size filter is required resulting to
less weight and consequently becoming economical. Results
show the feasibility of the novel photovoltaic inverter
connected to the utility. Further, adoption of a simple control
strategy should make the inverter more reliable. The cost of
this inverter will also be relatively low as minimum number of
power devices is used to execute this configuration. It is also
evident from the experimental result, that the harmonic
distortion of the output inverter current waveform at different
solar panel voltages levels can be maintained within the
specified regulation limits of the utility. All the above
advantages have made the inverter configuration highly
suitable for grid connected photovoltaic application.

- 573 -