2018 2nd International Conference on Electrical Engineering (EECon)

28 Sep 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka

DQ Transform Based Current Controller for

Single-Phase Grid Connected Inverter
Imanka Jayathilaka, Lushan Lakpriya, Damith De Alwis, Gayeshi Jayakody, K.T.M.U.Hemapala, J.P. Karunadasa, Himali Lakshika
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Moratuwa
Sri Lanka
140259M@uom.lk, lushanlakpriya@gmail.com, damithpavithra92@gmail.com, udayanga@uom.lk, karu@elect.mrt.ac.lk
gayeshijayakody@gmail.com, himali.lakshika@gmail.com

Abstract— In this paper, the design and simulation of a into the grid without violating the related rules and
current controller for a grid connected inverter is regulations [7].
implemented by using the synchronous reference frame Even though, large scale wind and solar farms use three
conversion. The active power and the reactive power phase inverters to produce AC power output, in most other
outputs of the inverter are controlled in the dq cases where the generation capacities are limited to few
reference frame with the use of Proportional-Integral kilowatts, similar to the case of domestic rooftop solar PV,
(PI) controllers. The measured grid current and grid a single phase inverter is required to interface the solar PV
voltage are used to generate an orthogonal signal pair power to the grid. In addition to that there are cases where
with the use of Second Order Generalized Integrator the three phase inverter control schemes are unable to
with Phase-Locked Loop (SOGI PLL). According to the produce sinusoidal grid currents due to the unbalancing of
available standards for grid connected inverters, the the three phase systems under faulty conditions, Due to
unity power factor operation of the inverter is essential. these reasons, the investigation of single phase inverters
In our design this is achieved by maintaining the and their controllers is really important.
reactive power reference of the controller at zero steady
state value. The injected grid current is forced to be in When the inverter is operating in standalone mode, we
phase with the grid voltage with the use of PLL. Also, a can use Open loop voltage feed forward controlling
third order LCL output filter design is proposed in this technique [2] to maintain the magnitude of the inverter
paper to filter out the switching harmonics. The Matlab output voltage at a desired tolerance band. But in the case
simulation results of the grid connected inverter are of grid tied inverter systems, as the inverter is subjected to
also included in this paper. many external disturbances from the grid, a more dynamic
control system is required to minimize the total harmonic
distortion of the injected grid current.
Keywords—Voltage Source Inverter, LCL filter, phase locked
loop, orthogonal signal generation.
The use of linear time-invariant theory to control AC
signals will result in a non-zero steady state error which is
known as the “following error” [2]. The way that we can
reduce this following error is by operating the power
I. INTRODUCTION
converter at a very high switching frequency which would
With the emergence of distributed generation systems result in poor efficiency due to high switching losses [1].
which can be used instead of centralized power stations, the
energy sector is experiencing a rapid evolution with In order to address the issue of following error,
advantages such as reduced transmission cost, greater Synchronous Reference Frame Theory (dq) is
energy security due to the availability of diversified implemented. By the use of this theory, the AC signals are
renewable energy resources and reduced fossil fuel transformed into DC quantities represented in the
burning. Due to the fact that the available new renewable synchronous rotating frame. It is also worth mentioning
sources are inherently intermittent in nature, power that dq transformation is not directly applicable to single
electronic converters are required to maximize the energy phase system. But as a solution, we can generate an
harnessed from these sources. And also, mainly in solar and orthogonal signal which will be having a phase difference
wind energy sector, the produced electrical power will not of 90 degrees with the initial single phase AC signal. And
be compatible for direct interfacing with the existing power by using these two quantities we can obtain the dq
grid. Therefore the use of power electronic converters to
transformation for the single phase case as well.
interface these energy sources to the grid is a necessity.
Inverters play a major role when connecting DC batteries, This paper describes the steps of designing and
Solar panels, fuel cells and variable speed wind turbines to simulating a single phase inverter with dq reference frame
the grid. The inverter and the related power electronic active and reactive power controlling.
equipment should be capable of harnessing maximum
energy out of these renewables, and transferring that energy
II. UNIPOLAR PWM INVERTER
In order to implement unipolar pulse width modulation,
two sinusoidal reference signals are required with the same

978-1-5386-7163-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

32
amplitude and frequency but with 180° phase difference.
These signals are compared with a triangular carrier
waveform to generate two pulse width modulation (PWM)
signals.

Fig.3: unfiltered output voltage and current waveform of inverter for a

resitive load

Fig.1: reference sine and inverted sine wave along with the triangular
carrier waveform III. DESIGN OF THE OUTPUT LCL FILTER
These two PWM signals are given to the upper left and When designing an inverter, inclusion of a filter circuit
upper right switches of the full bridge while their is essential so that it filters out the high frequency switching
complements are given to the lower left and lower right harmonics from the inverter output voltage waveform and
switches respectively. There is one important thing to the current injected to the grid to maintain low total
notice that both switches on a single leg will not be harmonic distortion according to the accepted standards
switched ON at the same time. If happened so, there will be [4]. Filter is the interface between the inverter and the grid.
a short circuit path across the DC voltage source and hence We can identify several basic types of filters such as L filter
can damage the switches due to overcurrent. Due to the with a single inductor, LC filter with a combination of an
possible commutation effects of the insulated gate bipolar inductor and a capacitor and a LCL filter which contains
transistors (IGBT’s), switching needs to be modified in two inductors and a capacitor.
order to provide a dead band time between the switching on
and off the switches which are on the same leg [3]. Among these filters, the LCL filter is considered as the
most suitable type of filter when considering the better
attenuation of the switching frequency harmonics and
providing better decoupling capability between the grid
impedance and the filter output current [2].

Fig.2: Simulink model for the unipolar PWM full bridge inverter

In this unipolar PWM method, the inverter output will

vary between and zero in the positive half cycle of Fig. 4: Full bridge inverter with LCL filter connected to the grid
the output. During the negative half cycle of the output, the
voltage will vary between and zero. This unipolar In the design of the inverter, selecting the values for the
switching scheme has the advantages of having less filter components depend on several factors. The L1
switching losses and less electromagnetic interference than
inductor in “Fig. 4” is known as the inverter side inductor
the bipolar PWM scheme. According to the definitions of
PWM, the frequency modulation ratio ( ) is defined as and the value of that inductance should be selected to
the ratio of carrier signal frequency to the reference signal minimize the ripple in the current flowing through the
frequency. In unipolar PWM technique, the harmonics switching IGBTs. The limiting of the current ripple is
occur only around harmonic orders of 2k where k is a essential as the presence of high current ripple may result
positive integer. As we are using a carrier triangular in high losses and unacceptable current stresses across the
waveform with value greater than 10, even though the
IGBTs. During the positive half cycle of the inverter output
total harmonic distortion (THD) is high at the unfiltered
stage, the order of the existing harmonics will be above the voltage, the current through L1 will increase while in the
order of 20 which is a major advantage. As there are no negative half cycle, the current will decrease [2]. The total
lower order harmonics, the existing higher order harmonics change in the current can be expressed as (1).
can be easily filtered out with a low pass filter which can
be implemented by using smaller sized inductors and
capacitors. This will reduce the size and the cost of the Vin Tsw
inverter. ∆i= (1-Mr sinω0 t)Mr sinω0 t (1)
2 L1

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 Here ∆ = change in current flowing through L1 during IV. SYNCHRONOUS D-Q REFERENCE FRAME
its steady state operation. is the input DC link voltage. The main problem when using proportional-integral
represents the switching time for the IGBT’s. is the (PI) controllers in order to control time varying signals such
modulation index and is the fundamental angular as sinusoidal currents and voltages is that the controller
frequency of the output voltage. cannot reach zero steady state error [5]. Therefore to avoid
Vin Tsw this problem, synchronous reference frame can be used to
∆i( )= (2) represent the time varying signals as dc signals. The logic
2L1 behind this is, a phasor which is rotating at an angular
Equation (2) can be obtained when the angle in (1) velocity ω will seem to be stationary relative to a reference
becomes, phasor who is rotating at the same angular velocity ω in the
same direction.
1
ω0 t=θ=sin-1 ( 2M ) (3) A. Transformation from three-Phase natural frame to the
r
Stationary Reference Frame
Therefore, the minimum L1 value which should be This transformation, which is also known as Clarke
there to limit the current ripple below a specific ∆i(max) can transformation is carried out for time varying three phase
be obtained from (4). signals in order to represent them using two orthogonal
Vin Tsw vectors in a stationary reference frame. The transformation
L1= (4) matrix which converts a balanced three phase system into a
8∆i(max)
two phase system is given by [8],
A. Filter capacitor design -1 -1 Xa
Capacitor of the LCL filter is used to filter out high Xα 2 1 2 2
Xb
frequency switching components of the inverter output Xβ = 3 √3 -√3
(8)
0 2 2 Xc
waveform. Hence the capacitor needs to act as a low pass
filter. But the introduction of capacitor will establish a Here Xa ,Xb ,Xc represents any three phase vectors and
reactive power consumption for the inverter. This reactive Xα ,Xβ the respective orthogonal vectors in the stationary
power requirement causes the reduction of the overall
reference frame.
output power factor and hence results in larger currents
through the IGBTs and L1 inductor. Therefore, in order to As this can be implemented easily for three phase
limit the reactive power consumption, maximum allowable system, the problem comes in when implementing this for
value for the capacitor can be obtained as follows. a single phase system. The solution for this problem is
Q0 generating a factious orthogonal signal (i.e. Xβ ) from the
C= (5) originally available time varying signal on the single phase
ω0 V2g
system. The orthogonal signal generation (OSG) for this
Here Q0 is the reactive power introduced by the case can be implemented in several ways such as transport
delay method, second order generalized integrator (SOGI)
capacitor and Vg is the grid voltage. Usually Q0 is kept
[4]. Here we are using the SOGI method.
below 5% of the rated output power of the inverter.
B. Stationary Reference Frame to the Synchronous
B. Design of grid side inductor L2 Reference Frame
Transfer function of the LCL filter in the s-domain can Even though the three phase signal can be converted
be expressed as follows [1]. into two phases which are in quadrature with each other,
i (s) 1
these two signals are still rotating at an angular frequency
GLCL (s)= Vn =L 3 +(L +L )s (6) of similar to the initial three phase vectors. Still PI
(s) L Cs
n 1 1 1 1
controllers cannot be applied to these signals as they will
L2 should be designed to minimize the THD and not produce zero steady state error. Hence αβ→dq
harmonic currents within the limits defined by the IEEE transformation is carried out in the following manner. The
standards. The minimum value of the L2 can be obtained dq transformation matrix is given by (9).
from (7). Xd cos θ sin θ Xα
1 |Vinv (jωn )| Xq = - sin θ cos θ Xβ (9)
L2 = L (L2 + ) (7)
1C -1 ωn μn I2
As the reference frames in dq are rotating at the same
In doing this calculation first we should obtain the angular frequency as the input αβ signals, there will be no
frequency spectrum of the inverter output voltage relative movement between the vectors and the references,
( ( )) . The dominant harmonic and the respective therefore those vectors will be seen as DC quantities and
harmonic angular frequency ( ) needs to be obtained hence PI controllers can be used successfully to control
from that spectrum. these signals. The following Simulink block was used to
implement the orthogonal signal generation for the single
Here is the expected harmonic proportion of the phase case of synchronous frame transformation. This
output current of the filter. | ( )| is the RMS value of block is based on the SOGI technique of orthogonal signal
the inverter output voltage. represents the RMS value of generation.
the injected current to the grid through the grid side
inductor. In addition, represents the angular frequency
of the dominant harmonic present in the inverter output
voltage frequency spectrum [2].

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 can be compared with a triangular carrier waveform to
generate the IGBT switching PWM signals to produce the
required inverter output voltage waveform.
The controlling is carried out in dq reference frame as
stated above to avoid the occurrence of non-zero steady
state error. But for the dq frame transformed signals to be
maintained in synchronism with the grid, a phase locked
loop (PLL) is implemented to track the phase of the grid
voltage continuously. The phase (ωt) of the grid voltage
which is obtained by the PLL is also required to implement
the dq transformation and inverse transformation.
Fig.5: Simulink model for OSG
VI. CURRENT CONTROL LOOP
The purpose of the current control loop is to generate a
reference voltage waveform for the inverter to achieve the
required power demands given by the outer power control
loop. By applying the Kirchhoff’s laws for the following
circuit we get (10).

Fig. 6: orthogonal signal in alpha beta reference frame

Fig. 8: filter circuit
V. CONTROL SUBSYSTEM
di
L dt +Ri=Vi-V (10)

Here L=L1 +L2 and R=R1 +R2 . In this simplification, the

effect of the shunt capacitor is neglected as it offers much
higher impedance to currents at the fundamental frequency.
And then the inductances can be considered as connected
in series and hence the above result. Vi denotes the inverter
output voltage, V denotes the grid side voltage and i
denotes the grid injected current. Then by applying the dq
transformation to Vi, i, V we can obtain the following two
equations.
did
L dt
+Rid -ωLiq =Vd1 -Vd (11)
diq
L dt
+Riq +ωLid =Vq1 -Vq (12)

id = direct axis current component iq = quadrature axis

current, Vd1 = direct axis inverter voltage, Vq1 =quadrature
inverter voltage, Vd = direct axis grid side voltage
Vq = quadrature axis grid voltage, ω = grid angular
Fig. 7: proposed inverter and its control subsystem frequency.
As we can see in equations (11) and (12), the d-axis and
To implement the control system for the grid connected q-axis output currents are mutually dependent on each
operation of the inverter, we are using cascaded control other. This will lead to the requirement of complex control
loop structures. The inverter is operated basically under the strategies unless these two are decoupled. Additionally, we
current controlled mode where the inner control loop is can also see that these currents depend on grid voltage also.
used to implement the current control. The outer loop is In case of a grid disturbance, it will directly affect the
implementing the power control where the active and system performance. In order to address these problems,
reactive power can be either controlled through given the output reference voltage waveform given to generate
reference values directly or either through the DC link the PWM switching are modified as follows. Let the
voltage regulation. In most of the photovoltaic applications, reference output voltage components in dq frame to be
DC link voltage regulation is used as the method of
represented as V*d1 and V*q1 . They are given as follows,
controlling the active power output of the inverter [8].
In this control scheme, the aim is to control the current V*d1 =Vd1 +ωLiq -Vd (13)
output to the grid according to the power requirement
demanded by the outer control loop. Then the current V*q1 =Vd1 -ωLiq -Vq (14)
control loop will create a reference voltage signal which And hence,

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 L
did
+Rid =V*d1 (15) inverter, grid voltage upper and lower limits are used to
dt detect under and over voltages conditions and to disconnect
L
diq
+Riq =V*q1 (16) the inverter from the grid.
dt

Now by selecting the current control loop output to be

V*d1 &V*q1 we can clearly observe that id & iq components
will only depend on the inverter output voltage reference
signal components. After generating these two V*q1 & V*d1
components, we can perform inverse dq transformation and
obtain the required reference signal to generate PWM
pulses.
VII. OUTER CONTROL LOOP
In this loop, the references for the active power and
reactive power which need to be fed into the grid are
obtained and the actual power delivered to the grid is also
calculated by using the dq frame components of the
measured grid current and voltage. From these
components, the active power (P) and reactive power (Q) Fig. 10: the grid voltage and grid current variations
can be calculated as follows [9].
P=Vd id +Vq iq (17)
Q=Vq id -Vd iq (18)
These calculated values can be compared with the
reference active and reactive power references and
accordingly reference output currents for the grid current
(i.e. i*q & i*d ) can be obtained by using PI controllers. Here
we can even obtain the required i*q & i*d without
implementing a control loop. But in order to improve the
dynamic response of the system to grid variations, a
feedback controller is added for power controlling. The
calculation of the i*d can also be implemented by the DC
link voltage regulation as in [8].
Fig. 11: the inverter active and reactive power output variation

In Fig 11, after reaching the steady state operation of

VIII. SIMULATION RESULTS the inverter, the reactive power output has remained almost
The following matlab Simulink model was used to constant in zero value and the active power remains
simulate the designed inverter in the grid connected mode. constant at 500W steady state value. After 8.4 seconds, the
Here two basic simulation cases are considered. One is the inverter is disconnected from the grid and hence the
current controlling response of the inverter in the grid inverter active power production drops to zero.
connected mode and the other one is the disconnection of
the inverter from the grid due to an overvoltage scenario.
The results are discussed below. IX. CONCLUSION
As observed in the simulation results, acceptable active
and reactive power control can be implemented by using PI
controllers. Here the direct and quadrature axes
components of grid current and voltage were used for
controlling. As observed, the presence of the active power
output sinusoidal component with twice the grid frequency
results in oscillatory response in the calculation of active
power and reactive power delivered to the grid. The result
of this is the increase in settling time of the calculated
output values for active and reactive power. However,
Fig. 9: simulated inverter circuit when compared with the other methods available for
current control, dq frame control depicts accurate control
The model was used to test the operation of the grid over the steady state active power and reactive power
connected inverter under the varying grid voltage and grid output with zero errors with the use of simple PI
frequency to check the response of the inverter without controllers.
implementing the islanding process. As the peak value of
the grid voltage is reduced, the injected grid current and X. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
hence the inverter current will increase. According to the
In this paper, a single phase grid connected inverter
magnitude of grid voltage drop, the increase in the inverter
design and simulation was implemented. Synchronous
output current levels can cause damage to the IGBT
reference frame control was carried out by the use of PI
switches. In order to avoid the possible damage to the
controllers. The simulation results showed acceptable

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accuracy in the active power and reactive power control of
the inverter. But in case of grid disturbances such as over
and under voltages, frequency variations, the use of passive
islanding detection methods by voltage and frequency
variation depicted sluggish responses in disconnecting the
inverter from the grid. The future plan will be to develop a
hybrid islanding detection scheme with the use of available
phase locked loop (PLL) and final objective is to develop
an inverter hardware setup to verify the successful active
and reactive power control through the use of dq reference
frame and PI controlling.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support
provided by the Senate Research Council, University of
Moratuwa (SRC/LT/2017/06).

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