A Three-Phase Grid Tied SPV System With Adaptive DC Link Voltage for CPI Voltage Variations

This paper deals with a three-phase two-stage grid tied SPV (solar photo-voltaic) system. The first stage is a boost converter, which serves the purpose of MPPT (maximum power point tracking) and feeding the extracted solar energy to the DC link of the PV inverter, whereas the second stage is a two-level VSC (voltage source converter) serving as PV inverter which feeds power from a boost converter into the grid. The proposed system uses an adaptive DC link voltage which is made adaptive by adjusting reference DC link voltage according to CPI (common point of interconnection) voltage. The adaptive DC link voltage control helps in the reduction of switching power losses. A feed forward term for solar contribution is used to improve the dynamic response. The system is tested considering realistic grid voltage variations for under voltage and over voltage. The performance improvement is verified experimentally. The proposed system is advantageous not only in cases of frequent and sustained under voltage (as in the cases of far radial ends of Indian grid) but also in case of normal voltages at CPI. The THD (total harmonics distortion) of grid current has been found well under the limit of an IEEE-519 standard.