Echo State Network Control Based Power Quality Enhancement in Grid-Interactive Solar Photovoltaic System

This study applies an echo-state network (ESN)-based technique to enhance the utility power quality performance in a grid-integrated solar photovoltaic (PV) system supplying a specially non-linear load. The proposed system serves multiple functionalities, such as improvement of power quality parameters, which includes harmonics suppression, load balancing, neutral current compensation, source reactive power reduction and correcting low power factor, simultaneously managing the solar PV power generated for supplying the load. The proposed control algorithm extracts the contaminated source currents’ active and non-active harmonic free fundamental weight components. These weights are further used to estimate the source current reference signals and generate the switching signals for the voltage source inverter (VSI) that integrates the grid with the solar PV system. A small-scale two-stage PV power unit linked with a grid is developed in the laboratory. A DSP-dSPACE 1104 controller is used to implement the ESN controller for the grid-integrated PV system. In a three-phase, four-wire distribution system, the suggested algorithm has been evaluated and demonstrated to effectively address multiple power quality issues while managing solar energy.