Solar Power Electronics System Design for the Future Building Laboratory at Concordia University

Saving the earth from becoming an uninhabitable planet as a reason for global warming, can be achieved by reducing gas emissions and carbon footprint. Today, buildings account for a large portion of global energy consumption and CO2 emissions; therefore, buildings with integrated renewable energy capacity and net-zero energy technology practices can positively contribute to the global goal of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. This research is done on a single-family detached house in Québec, which is a research laboratory built to test renewable energy integrated systems at Concordia University, Montréal. A solar power system is designed and simulated in PSIM software for this house to benefit from solar energy. The system consists of grid-connected inverters, grid-forming inverters, and batteries. Only the interactions between the grid, the batteries, and the grid-forming inverters are designed and simulated in three modes of operation. 1) Grid feeds the loads, 2) grid chargers the battery, and 3) battery feeds the loads. Design and simulation of such power systems give the reader a clear mindset on how the system performs during the actual testing of the devices and bring a more intuitive understanding of the real circuits and controllers used. For validation purposes, one mode of operation for the grid-forming inverter is performed experimentally, and the obtained results are matching the simulated results.