Active and Reactive Power Control in Three Phase Solar

PV Inverter using Modified IC Method

D. Pal, Student Member, IEEE P. Bajpai, Senior Member, IEEE
Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India
diptendupal@ee.iitkgp.ernet.in pbajpai@ee.iitkgp.ernet.in

Abstract - With the increment of solar photovoltaic II. PROBLEM FORMULATION

installation in power grid, solar power penetration level, over
loading of grid and power fluctuation are becoming prominent To control the solar PV penetration level a modified
issues. To address the problems, active and reactive power fed incremental conductance (IC) method is introduced in this
to the grid from solar inverter are needed to be controlled. paper. 5 kW solar PV inverter is considered for active and
Regulation of active power from solar inverter is performed by reactive power control. The schematic diagram of the system
modifying maximum power point tracking algorithm of used in this study is shown in Fig. 1.
photovoltaic generation and run in off maximum power mode.
To operate the solar plant in off maximum power mode,
fractional voltage based modified incremental conductance
method is introduced in this paper. The solar photovoltaic
inverter over which this active power control is operated, is
modeled in MATLAB/Simulink and this model is tested for real
irradiance and temperature conditions. Reactive power control
is also performed in standard test condition. Simulation results
illustrate the desired limited active power injection into the grid Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of 5 kW grid connected solar PV system.
from solar photovoltaic system and reactive power ancillary The 5 kW solar PV system is simulated using irradiance
support as well. and module temperature data of sunny and cloudy day
collected from SCADA system of a 100 kW rooftop mounted
Index Terms-Active power control. Reactive power control.
Fractional voltage based incremental conductance method.
solar PV plant situated at IIT Kharagpur, India. On these
input data of sunny and cloudy days the input active power
I. INTRODUCTION control of solar PV system is performed. The modifed IC
method is utilized to control the solar PV output voltage or
Solar photovoltaic (PV) based generation is one of the DC-DC converter input voltage, thus modified IC method
most popular renewable energy sources. From Energy Statics controls input and output power of solar inverter as well. The
of India, the solar PV installation capacity till 31st March, off-MPPT mode results are compared with MPPT mode case
2015, is considered as 4.8 GW [1] and it will reach to 7 GW for same input conditions. To control the reactive power, the
in 2016. This high level of solar PV installed in power grid reactive power references are generated from active power
rises the issue related to penetration level if sufficient amount and varying the power factor inbetween 1 to 0.7 leading and
of storage is not integrated to the system. To control this lagging cases under standard test condition (STC).
penetration level of solar PV, maximum power point tracking
(MPPT) algorithm is needed to be modified. A cost effective A. Modeling of Solar Photovoltaic Array
way to utilize solar PV power is followed in German Grid In this paper, 5 kW PV array has been modeled in
Code [2] and Danish Grid Code [3]. In a state of art work of MATLAB/Simulink using ploy crystalline solar PV panel
solar PV penetration level control, modification in MPPT is (ELDORA 250) data. The modeling equations of solar PV
performed in [4] by operating in off-MPPT mode. In case of module is depicted in (1-4) [7] representing IV characteristics
solar PV integrated with two stage two level inverter, the off- of solar PV module. The equivalent solar PV module is
MPPT mode causes fluctuation in DC link voltage [5]. This shown in Fig. 2.
off-MPPT mode is depicted as constant solar power (1)
generation in [6]. In the scope of the existing literature, new
kind of MPPT control based on modified incremental 1 (2)
conductance (IC) method for fractional voltage change is
introduced in this paper. This fractional voltage based (3)
incremental conduction (FV-IC) is used to run solar PV in off-
MPP voltage to extract desired power. Along with this, the 1 1
solar inverter is operated in unity, lagging and leading power , (4)
factor scenarios as the ancillary service of reactive power
control.

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 B. k Factor Control of Boost Converter
From small signal modeling of boost converter, transfer
function between input voltage Vin and duty ratio d are
calculated. The open loop voltage control transfer function
Fig. 2. Equivalent model of solar PV module. GVind(s) is calculated as shown in (6).
From Fig. 2, I and V are output current and voltage of 213148222.2 (6)
single module respectively. Iph is photocurrent and Id is body 15.277 222222.22
diode current and Ip is parallel branch current of the module. Voltage of input capacitor and current of inductor of boost
T (K) and G (kW/m2) are module temperature and solar converter are considered as states of the system to formulate
irradiance respectively. Tref (k) and Gref (kW/m2) are module GVind(s). This boost converter voltage control transfer
reference temperature and irradiance, are taken as per STC. k function is compensated using PI lead-lead compensator
and q are Boltzmann constant and electronic charge Gc(s) by k factor III method [9] shown in (7).
respectively. αT, n, and I0,ref, are temperature coefficient of 2405.591 160.3 127.2 (7)
photocurrent, body diode ideality factor and body diode 7070 6937
reference current respectively and they are considered as 3.49 The compensated voltage control open loop transfer function
mA/K, 1.1~1.2 and 1.585 × 10-8 A respectively. Ncell is GVindcom(s) is shown in (8).
number of cells connected in series in a module and it is taken (8)
as 60. Rs and Rp equivalent series and shunt resistors are taken
as 1.79 mΩ and 187.8 Ω with respect to slope of I-V curve of The compensated voltage control loop transfer function
a single solar PV module respectively. Short circuit current cancels out the switching frequency disterbance. From this
and open circuit voltage of solar module are taken as 8.75 A compensated voltage control loop, the duty ratio d and
and 37.25 V respectively from the data sheet of ELDORA switching pulse of boost converter are generated.
250. The solar module equation (2) has been appropriately
modified to represent solar array as given in (5) [7]. C. Modeling of PWM Inverter
Previously modeled boost converter feeds power to
three phase PWM inverter. Data sheet of KACO TL 5.0 (5
(5) kW Central Inverter) is referred while modeling PWM
inverter. dq-axis based synchronous reference frame control
is utilized for inverter control [10] shown in Fig. 3. This
synchronous reference frame based control provides simple
1 and independent control of active and reactive power of
inverter. Three phase grid voltages and currents are converted
VA and IA are voltage and current of solar array respectively. into synchronously rotating dq frame so that control variables
In (5) Ns and Np are the number of module in a string and become DC quantities. The grid voltage magnitude is found
number of total parallel strings respectively. For 5 kW PV out by orianting the grid voltage vector along d axis. Phase
array Ns and Np are taken as 20 and 1 respectively. Lock Loop (PLL) is utilized to calculate the grid voltage
angle θ and frequency.
III. THREE PHASE GRID TIE INVERTER MODELING
The modeling of 5 kW gird tie central inverter is
performed considering two stage two level PWM inverter and
boost converter is taken as intermediate DC-DC converter.
A. Modeling of Boost Converter
A boost converter is used as DC-DC converter inside the
three phase inverter. Boost converter’s inductor L* and input
capacitor Cin are calculated considering 1% current ripple and
10 % voltage ripple respectively. DC link capacitor of boost
converter Cdclink is calculated considering 1% voltage ripple
[8]. The boost converter parameters are listed in Table I.
TABLE I
BOOST CONVERTER PARAMETERS
Boost Converter Parameters Values
Cin, Input capacitor 125 µF
L*, Inductor 30 mH
Cdclink, DC link capacitor 1000 µF
MOSFET switch’s switching frequency 20 kHz
Vin, Input voltage to boost converter at STC 600 V
Vdclink, DC link/Output voltage from boost converter 1200 V Fig. 3. Synchronous reference frame control of three phase inverter.

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 Two levels of PWM inverter comprise of six IGBT point will shift to OP 2. From this new operating point OP 2,
switches. Switching pulses for IGBT switches are generated off-MPPT mode voltage and active power will be calculated.
from completely decoupled but cascaded voltage and current
control loops. The cascaded voltage and current control loops 0 (11)
are integrated with dq-axis based control and are shown in
Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Cascaded voltage and current control loops of three phase inverter.
The current control loop transfer function (9) is formulated
considering L filter. The AC side resistor and filter inductor
values are evaluated by taking 10% and 5% of base
impedance. PI controller is utilized for inner current loop and
the PI controller parameters are calculated consdering pole Fig. 5. Shift of operating Point ftom MPPT to off-MPPT in PV Curver.
zero cancellation method [10]. Voltage control loop transfer
function is given in (10). For voltage controller modeling, the The modification in IC method for off-MPPT mode of
characteristic equation of second order closed loop system is operation and modified duty ratio generation are shown in
considered and PI controller parameters for this loop is Fig. 6. In MPPT and off-MPPT operation, the voltage error
evaluated using [11]. All parameters and their values are generates duty ratio d in the boost converter using
given in Table II. compensator.
1
(9)
L
3
(10)
2√2 C

TABLE II
INVERTER PARAMETERS
Parameters Values
3 Phase grid voltage and frequency 415 Vrms, 50 Hz
DC link voltage 1200 Vdc Fig. 6. Fractional voltage based incremental conductance method
Cdclink, DC link capacitor 1000 µF
L, Filter inductor 10.96 mH E. Reactive Power Control
R, AC side resistor 1.7225 Ω The reactive power is controlled from active AC power
m1, Modulation index 0.85 sent to the grid by solar inverter at STC and changing power
Current controller parameters Kp = 5.48, Ki = 861.25 factor from 1 to 0.7 for unity, leading and lagging cases. The
Voltage controller parameters Kp = 0.1568, Ki = 11.109
reactive power reference will change the q-axis current in dq
Switching frequency 10 kHz
axis current control loop inside the inverter. By this, solar
D. Modified IC Method of Active Power Control inverter is operated in upf., leading and lagging pf. modes.
The 5 kW solar system with single string configuration
IV. RESULTS
is integrated with single MPPT logic. IC method is used to
track the maximum power point voltage. As per the proposed The real solar power plant of 100 kW is installed at
method, IC will generate change of voltage ∆V from solar rooftop of academic building in IIT Kharagpur since 2014.
array. ∆V is positve in left hand side of PV curve and negative Data of solar irradiance and module temperature are taken
in right hand side of PV curve shown in Fig. 5. This ∆V is from smart meter and data logger installed with the real
changed until conductance equation (11) become zero and system. Analysing solar irradiance and temperature data from
thus maximum power and maximum power point (MPP) smart meter, 2nd May and 16th May, 2016 are considered as
voltage are found. For MPPT mode the operating point is OP sunny and cloudy days respectively. Solar irradiance and
1 in Fig. 5. In case of off-MPPT mode, if PV power increases module temperature data over 24 hours for these two days are
from the reference power (off-MPPT mode power reference), shown in Fig. 7-10. On sunny day (2nd May, 2016) solar
a fractional voltage change ∆V’ will be generated and it will irradiance and module temperature vary smooth due to clear
reduce the MPP voltage to off-MPP voltage and operating sky on that day and they are shown in Fig. 7-8.

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 charged to off-MPPT voltage. This off-MPPT mode voltage
sets desired solar power output solving (1-5). The active
power control in case of sunny day is shown in Fig. 11.

Fig. 7. Solar irradiance on sunny day (2nd May, 2016).

Fig. 11. Active power control of solar inverter on sunny day.

In case of cloudy day, the active power control is
performed for 2 kW and 1.5 kW power references and it is
shown in Fig. 12. On cloudy day the solar power generated
from PV system follows the same pattern of irradiance. If the
solar PV power is less than reference power, the solar inverter
Fig. 8. Module temperature on sunny day (2nd May, 2016). works in MPPT mode. If solar power is equal to given power
In case of cloudy day (16th May, 2016) due to cloud reference, then it never goes beyond the reference power due
shading, the random rise and fall of solar irradiance and to FV-IC method and solar inverter operates in off-MPPT
module temperature are seen from Fig. 9-10. Due to the mode.
intermittent solar irradiance and module temperatrue change
on the solar array, the solar power output reduces drastically.

Fig. 12. Active power control of solar inverter on cloudy day.

Fig. 9. Solar irradiance on cloudy day (16th May, 2016). To control the reactive power requirement from solar
inverter, STC condition is considered as input. In this case,
the reactive power reference for inverter is generated
considering active power output from the system and
operating the inverter in between 1 to 0.7 unity, leading and
lagging power factor conditions. The change in reactive
power reference changes the value of q-axis current
component of the inverter and thus the reactive power
generated from the inverter changes. The upf., leading and
lagging pf. operations of inverter is shown in Fig. 13.

Fig. 10. Module temperature on cloudy day (16th May, 2016).

Active power control of the solar inverter system on
sunny day is performed on the solar irradiance and module
temperature data shown in Fig. 7-8. To control active power
in case of sunny day, the the solar power references are set
as 3 kW and 2 kW in FV-IC. Depending on the power
references (3 kW and 2 kW) provided to MPPT, the sunny
day’s actual solar PV power reduces from its original peak
due to off MPPT voltage. This off MPPT mode voltage is
tracked by compensator of boost converter. After input
voltage tracking of boost converter the input capacitor Cin is Fig. 13. Reactive power control at STC.

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 V. CONCLUSIONS
For large solar PV plant, regulation in penetration level
is becoming challenging due to insufficient use of storage
devices. Moreover due to high penetration level of solar PV,
the grid voltage and power fluctuation degrade the grid
stability. To address the concerning issue the active power
injected from solar inverter should be regulated. To control
active power from solar inverter, MPPT logic is modified and
solar PV is operated in reduced voltage and power mode. For
this a fraction voltage based IC method is proposed in this
paper. Regulating MPPT of solar PV by FV-IC the solar
power generated from inverter is controlled in any type of
ambient situation. For sunny and cloudy day, the solar PV
operated in both MPPT and off-MPPT depending on the pre-
set active power reference and limited active power is sent to
the grid. Additional to the active power control, reactive
power control is simulated on unity, legging and leading pf.
cases as ancillary service provided by solar inverter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported from DST sponsored UK-Indo
project entitled as “Reconfigurable Distribution Networks”.
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