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Reactive Power Control of Single Phase Grid Tied

Voltage Sourced Inverters for Residential PV


Application
Xiangdong Zong Peter W. Lehn
Department of Electrical and Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering Computer Engineering
University of Toronto University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G4 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G4
Email: xiangdong.zong@utoronto.ca Email: lehn@ecf.utoronto.ca

Abstract-This paper introduces a reactive power control


method for a grid tied single phase Voltage Sourced I nverter
(VSI), which is used for residential photovoltaic (PV) power , ,
: '
integration. The focus is on designing a low complexity grid lor more
synchronization method, which decouples the active and reactive
power component so that each component can be controlled
AC
independently. The AC current and DC voltage controllers for the LCLfilter grid
VSI are briefly discussed. The design and analysis of the grid DC link VSI

synchronization method are described in detail. Experimental


results validate the effectiveness of the controller and the reactive
power control ability. Fig. 1. Two stage single phase PV inverter system

I. INTRODUCTION
As more distributed resources (DR), such as solar and wind,
become integrated into the utility grid at the distribution level, a current reference that consists of active and reactive compo­
the trend that the DR units actively supply reactive power nents. The proposed synchronization method is advantageous
to the grid has appeared. Having the capability of supplying in numerous ways. Firstly, it is able to reproduce two decou­
reactive power, these DRs will help in supporting local grid pled components that are parallel and orthogonal to the grid
voltage and reducing the burden of delivering reactive power voltage. This is in contrast to techniques that only duplicate
from central generation to the local distribution level for the grid voltage so that the output current has the same phase
compensating of inductive load [1]-[4]. as the grid voltage yielding zero reactive current [7]. Secondly,
Although purposeful injection of reactive power or attempt­ the proposed method is immune to grid voltage distortion so
ing to support grid voltage by a distributed generator is not that the generated current reference remains undistorted. The
currently permitted by the IEEE 1547-2003 grid integration synchronous frame Phase Locked Loops (PLLs) shown in [8]­
standard [5], next generation grid codes for DRs are an­ riO], although not explicitly specified, also has the potential
ticipated to incorporate requirements for ancillary services, to provide sufficient phase information to the controller for
including reactive power compensation to support local grid the reactive current reference generation. However, its imple­
voltage [6]. As a result, the ability of single phase grid­ mentation process can be complicated due to the need for an
interfaced inverters to provide reactive power control will orthogonal component emulator and real-time sine and cosine
facilitate compliance with future grid requirements. operations while performing af3 - dq transforms. The proposed
In a typical two-stage PV inverter configuration shown in grid synchronization method is therefore advantageous for its
Fig. 1, within which a DCIDC converter is used for voltage simplicity, which only utilizes a two by two state matrix to
amplification and maximum power point tracking, the down reproduce filtered parallel and orthogonal components of the
stream DCI AC inverter may readily provide control of the grid voltage. The final reference current is then created through
reactive power flow. In Fig. 1, a full bridge voltage sourced a simple summing and normalization process.
inverter (VSI) with a LCL filter is used as the power circuit In section II, the control scheme of the single phase grid
of the grid tied DCI AC inverter. tied VSI is discussed. This section includes design of a
In this paper, a computationally efficient reactive power sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) based current
control method is developed for single phase VSIs. A low controller using a proportional resonant (PR) compensator.
complexity grid synchronization method is developed to create Section II also talks about the design of a voltage controller

978-1-4673-2421-2/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 696


Current Controller Plant
��"� �H� Vg(s)
r------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------

iI,rel('!4 � i��JJr
+
-jl� Vt
C
Vg- V,(,!
iT I
rv

+�. VSI
_

I---
Kl

LCL Filter
I--
c ____________________
G( )
== , ' I
___________________

r
I
• ref

-g-1
-
19 Fig. 3. Current controller block diagram
+
SPWM Gls) - �-

DC Voltage

I I
Current Control
F eed-forward the space vector theory cannot be applied, so that system mod­
Hnolch( S) • ref elling and controller design cannot be done in the d-q frame.

Vd/ejt()-
19l1 For this reason, the controller needs to be able to track a single
Grid
� c- Synchronizer t--
r�
-

sinusoidal current reference directly. A traditional proportional


Gv(s) •

19�
f
re

t V9 - integral (PI) compensator is not a good choice for tracking of


a sinusoidal signal as it would lead to steady state magnitude
DC Voltage Control Grid Synchronization
and phase errors [12]. Alternately, a PR compensator, based
on the "internal model principle" first proposed by Francis and
Fig. 2. Controller Block Diagram
Wonham [13], has an "infinite gain" at the reference signal's
oscillating frequency [14], [15]. This would eliminate the
steady state error when tracking a sinusoidal signal. Therefore,
that applies a notch filter in the voltage feedback, which helps
this research takes the advantage of the PR compensator and
to reduces the size of the DC-link capacitor. Section III focuses
uses it as the closed loop compensator, Gi(s), for tracking of
on the design of the proposed grid synchronization method.
the reference current. The PR compensator Gi(s), used in this
Experimental results that validate the control scheme and the
work, has a transfer function of the form:
grid synchronization method are shown in section IV.

II. CONTROL SCHEME OF SINGLE PHASE GRID TIED VSI (2)


The design of the control system for the inverter can be
divided into three parts: 1) current controller, 2) DC voltage Here K� and K'f are the proportional and integral gain, (
controller and 3) grid synchronization. A block diagram of the is the damping term and Wo is the fundamental frequency of
controller is shown in Fig. 2. A current controller regulates the grid voltage, at which this closed loop controller perfectly
the AC current injected into the grid and a voltage controller tracks the reference signal. The damping term ( reduces the
regulates the DC voltage at a desirable level. A nonlinear "infinite gain" marginally to widen the bandwidth and to
DC voltage feed-forward signal is employed at the output of ensure controller internal dynamics remain stable.
the current controller so that the modulation signal sent to
the SPWM modulator cancels out the effect of the double­ B. Voltage Controller
line frequency ripple that appears on the DC-link. Unlike
In rooftop PV application, using electrolytic capacitors are
controlling a three phase VSI [11], the active and the reactive
less desirable for their short operational lifetime, especially
power of the single phase VSI cannot be controlled by varying
when exposed to outdoor temperatures [16], [17]. Long life­
id and iq in the d-q frame. Instead, a low complexity grid
time film capacitors can be used as substitutes, however,
synchronization method is proposed to create a grid current
their high prices limit the size that can be used in building
reference that consists of both active and reactive components.
PV inverters. This would practically limit the size of the
This grid synchronizer is described in detail in section III.
DC-link capacitor, causing significant double line frequency
A. Current Control Using Proportional Resonant Compen­ ripple to appear on the DC-link voltage. This double line
sator frequency ripple may further couple through the control loop
and causes undesirable low order harmonics distortion on the
A single phase feedback current loop is used to regulate the
output current. Therefore, as shown in Fig. 2, a notch filter
grid current. The current controller and the plant are modelled
is placed on the DC voltage feedback signal to attenuate the
as shown in Fig. 3. The plant G f(s) is simply the transfer
ripple component. The filter is given by:
function of the LCL filter, which is of the form:

sCfRd + 1 (3)
G f ( S) =

s3 LiLgCf + s2CfRd(Li + Lg) + S(Li + Lg)'


(1) where Wn is twice the fundamental frequency. A simple PI
The challenge of designing a SPWM based current con­ compensator is then used as G v (s) in the voltage control loop
troller for a single phase VSI is primarily from the fact that to regulate the DC link voltage.

697
1-------'"---.rYl-----�
-- 1 Tef -10

�-�EE>�
.

-20
/ /
/ /
/ � �
/
-30 � �
/ �
/ �
/ / �
-40
� �
/ /
/

-50
/

-60

1
-70

V g-
-80

Amplitude v 90

Ksync=100
identifier Ksync=300
�--"'-------'-�
- 45
--

- . - Ksync=500

� - - - Ksync=1000

Fig. 4. Grid synchronizer block diagram �


tf.
-45

-90
x = Ax + Be y 10° 10' 10' 10'

Xl
, , ------,=- Frequency (rad/sec)

y=Cx + De
v II(jw)
(a) bode plot of _.0--
Vg(JW.-
)

"------11 xj=[l 0] �
-
y
de ag ra
_ O__ Di�� _m�______�____�
20r-���____��B

------- -
0 - - - _ . - _ . - - .:: .-=...-=-
Fig. 5. Feedback loop of the grid voltage estimator
-20

� -40

III. GRID SYNCHRONIZ ATION METHOD FOR GENERATING


� -60

ACTIVE AND RE ACTIVE CURRENT REFERENCE -80

-100
The grid synchronizer consists of two parts: (i) a grid 180

voltage estimator, and (ii) an amplitude identifier. An overview


135

,
of the grid synchronizer is shown in Fig. 4.
90

A. Grid Voltage Estimator

The grid voltage estimator takes the grid voltage as its input
45
.
\
, '- - "::..-
,
'-
.
� ,

0
" .

and outputs one signal that is aligned with the grid voltage 10° 102 103

(parallel component), and a second signal that leads the grid Frequency (ra dlsec)

voltage by 900 (orthogonal component). This estimator is V _djw)


(b) bode plot of q
expressed in the state space form as: Vg(Jw)

voll (;w) vq.!. (jw)


Fig. 6. Bode plot of Vg(J and Vg(J
w) w)

[-Wo wo] X[2l] �[ksYnc] X


[XX2l] �O
A B

v
+
(g d
(4)

X2, Xl
. _

0 x 0
frequency, while also rejecting other harmonics that appear on

[�:�] [::] � [::]


c the grid voltage. On the other hand,
of (4), always has the same amplitude as
based on the solution
but leads by Xl
900• Consequently, the output YI is denoted as v
gll is denoted
to illustrate
Y2
- Xl
its alignment with the grid voltage and the output
as V J. to illustrate it is orthogonal to the grid voltage.

Xl The estimator in (4) takes V


g
g
as its input and outputs
as the parallel component of v . Thus, this essentially
g
The state space form of the compensator ((4» can be further

Xl
resembles a feedback loop as illustrated in Fig. 5, where the rewritten to the standard state space form shown in (5), so that
tracks v • V is expressed as the input to the estimator and the outputs
output
g g
The reference signal of this feedback loop is v , a sinusoidal are the parallel component and the orthogonal component of
g v .

Wo Woo
signal oscillating at the grid frequency. The state matrix fl.,
which is an internal oscillator, oscillates at This provides
g

ksync
the estimator with infinite gain at in the frequency domain.

[�X2l] '-[-ksWoy:c wo]' XX[2l] �[ksync]


In (4), the term introduces damping to the oscillator

wo Xl Wo
A B

which widens the estimator's bandwidth and reduces the gain


v
at Therefore, setting to be the fundamental frequency of +
(g)
(5)
tracking the input V at its fundamental
=

0 0
g
the grid results in

698
X2
c X2

[�:�1 [::1 � [::1


The bode plot of each output of the com ensator's responses
are shown in Fig. 6. In Fig. 6a, the ��'dE :;;response has a Xl

magnitude of OdB and a phase of 00 at the grid fundamental


frequency and attenuates distortion at any other frequencies.
���«jw»
In Fig. 6b, the Vg JW response also keeps the magnitude
at OdB at the grid fundamental frequency but only attenuates
distortion at higher frequencies. Meanwhile, the phase of the
(a) ksync=200 (b) ksync=600
���«(jw»
Vg JW
response is at 900 at the grid fundamental frequency Fig. 7.
ksync
Start up trajectory of the estimator's state variables for different
values
so that VgJ.. leads Vg by 900• It can also be observed from
Fig. 6 that the more ksync increases, the less the synchro­
1.05 ,-----,----,--,,---,
nizer is sensitive to slight variations of the grid fundamental
frequency, but more vulnerable to noise at other frequencies.
Furthermore, the larger ksync gets, the wider the controller's =�,--=
---
_.-.- . -. _ ' �-"""
. -=. _. -. -'-
bandwidth extends, which means the faster v locks on to vg.
gll ,
The start-up trajectories of the state variables Xl and X2 / ,
,
/
u:-
are shown in Fig. 7 for different values of ksync. Zero initial a.
� 0.95 I
/ ,
,
I
conditions are assumed in each case. From the two plots, �
U. I
I ,
\

several observations can be extracted. First, the final state I



I
trajectories are identical circles proving that Xl and X2 are 0.9 ,
\
sinusoidal functions with 900 phase difference. Second, the - - - Ksync=200 \

....... Ksync=300
\

radius of the circle is equal to the magnitude of the grid \

- ync=500
voltage, indicating that both sinusoidal functions have an �
0.85
. _. _. '\ync=1000
I
amplitude equal to the magnitude of the grid voltage. This I

effectively demonstrates that the grid estimator resembles the 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70


Freqeuncy (Hz)
fundamental component of the grid voltage and emulates an
orthogonal component with the same magnitude. Third, with
Fig. 8. Power factors vs. grid frequencies for Q=O while neglecting switching
the initial conditions of states Xl and X2 equal to zero, the
harmonics
plot with the larger ksync has a faster speed to reach the final
trajectory.
In addition, when setting the grid voltage estimator's in­ avoid using the square root operand. However, peak detection
ternal oscillator's frequency Wo to be 377rads/s (60Hz), the of either v
gll or VgJ.. is preferred because the grid voltage
power factor of the inverter when exposing to different grid estimator attenuates the harmonic distortion that appears on
frequencies is computed. Results are shown in Fig. 8 for dif­ the grid voltage, so that the peak detection for the output of
ferent ksync values. Switching harmonics have been neglected the estimator is more accurate than for the grid voltage itself.
and the reactive power compensation feature of the inverter
is turned off. One can observe that as ksync gets larger, the C. Synchronized Current Reference Creation
power factors have become more consistent over a broad range Once v
of frequencies. gll and VgJ.. are obtained from the grid voltage
estimator, and l1g is obtained from the amplitude identifier,
B. Amplitude Identifier controlling the phase of the current reference becomes possi­
ble. Given the grid reference current's parallel and orthogonal
A grid voltage amplitude identifier is needed to determine
the amplitude of the grid voltage. The amplitude identifier has
components, and i�r
a synchronized current reference i�1.,
signal can be obtained as follows:
the form:
.ref .ref
(6) iref9
=
tgll vgll
-='--_
-;:-
+
--"-__
tgJ.. VgJ..
(7)
l1g
x i + x � as
v'
Equivalently, we may also write l1g
Since the parallel component of the current reference i��f
i��f
graphically displayed in the transient state plane plot of Fig. 7.
Other options of implementing the amplitude identifier may is aligned with the grid voltage, this controls the active
include peak detection for the grid voltage or peak detection power flow to the grid. On the other hand, since the orthogonal
for either output of the grid voltage estimator. Both methods component of the current reference leads the grid voltage i�1.
699
TABLE I :��:- AgiltIHtTecllnologies FRIAUG0516:01 00 2011

INVERTER PARAMETERS AND COMPONEN T VALUES

Grid voltage Vg 60V (RMS)


Rated output current I�ated lOA (RMS)
DC-link nominal voltage VJ� 140V (RMS)
DC-link Capacitor, Cdc 230/-LF
Bridge side inductor Li 300/-LH
Grid side inductor Lg 100/-LH
Filter capacitor Cf 30/-LF
-ig(t)
Filter damping resistor Rd 1.50
Switching frequency Jsw 30kHz
(a) Grid current is in phase with the voltage
TABLE II
INVERTER STEADY STATE OPERATION RESULT S :::�:- AgilentTechnologies FRIAUG0516:18:32 2011

Corresponding Fig Power factor %DC-link ripple (%)


Fig. 9a 17.S
Fig. 9b IS.0
Fig. 9c IS. 1

by 900, this i�1.


controls the reactive power flow to the grid.
-ig(t)
i��f
In the overall control system of the single phase VSI, shown
in Fig. 2, is the output of the voltage controller. This
therefore depends on the amount of power that is transferred (b) Grid current lags the voltage by 900
by the front end DC/DC converter. i�1.
is the user defined
::-�:::- AgilentTechnologies FRIAUG0515:29:192011

independent input command to synchronizer allowing decou­


pled control of reactive power. The value of i�1.
is limited by
the current rating of the inverter.

IV EXPERIMENT RESULTS
To verify the effectiveness of the control scheme, an ex­
perimental prototype was built. The control system is imple­
mented on a 32-bits fixed point microcontroller. Voltage and -iy{t)
current signals are sampled using the internal lO-bit analog­
to-digital converter inside the microcontroller. The front end
(c) Grid current lags the voltage by 36.80 (PF=O.S, lag­
DC/DC converter is emulated using a constant current source. ging)
The system parameters and component values used for the Fig. 9. Steady state operation of the inverter
experimental setup are listed in Table I.

A. Steady State Response


output grid current is kept at OA. The DC voltage transient
Fig. 9 shows the steady state operating DC-link voltage
response demonstrates good system dynamics where the DC­
Vdc(t), grid voltage vg(t), and the current flowing into the
link voltage settling time is around 20ms and the percentage
grid -ig(t). The inverter is running its rated output current
i
- g lOA (RMS) and a grid frequency of 60Hz. Figs. 9a
=
overshoot is less than 30%. Fig. lOb shows the step response
of the inverter when the reactive power controlling command
through 9c illustrate operating scenarios where the inverter is
i�1. steps up from OA to lOA (RMS) while DC-link voltage
generating pure active power, pure reactive power, and a mix
of active and reactive power, respectively. The correspondent
is kept at constant l40V The i�1.
step change demonstrates
good decoupling of the parallel and orthogonal axis of the
measured results are listed in Table II. These experimental
results demonstrate the reactive power control capability of
controller as the step change in i�1.
causes little impact on
the DC-link voltage.
the inverter. In addition, it can be seen that with a fairly large
double line frequency voltage ripple presented on the DC-link,
V CONCLUSION
the total demand distortions (TDD) of the output gird current
of all three cases are below 5%. This proves the effectiveness In this paper, a reactive power control method is developed
of the non-linear DC voltage feed-forward signal and the notch for single phase VSIs. A PR compensator is used in the current
filter in the DC voltage control loop. control loop for tracking a sinusoidal reference current. A
notch filter is added to the DC-link voltage feedback signal to
B. Transient Response filter out the double line frequency ripple component appeared
Fig. lOa shows the transient response of the inverter when on the DC-link voltage so that the output grid current is not
the DC-link voltage steps up from l20V to l40V while the distorted by this ripple component.

70 0
A low complexity grid synchronization method is developed
. :�:
� : . AgilentTechnologies THU AUG 04 17:30:26 2011
10 00 00 D
to create a current reference that consists of active and reactive
components. The reactive component i�1
can be used as
the reactive power control conunand which tells the inverter
how much reactive current needs to be injected/absorbed.
This therefore gives the inverter the ability of independently
controlling the reactive power flow. Furthermore, the proposed
grid synchronizer only uses a two by two state matrix to gen­
erate the parallel and orthogonal components. This lowers the
implementation complexity and the computational burden on
the digital processor comparing to methods using synchronous
frame PLLs, which require sine and cosine calculations for d­ (a) DC-link voltage step response
q frame transformation. The drawback of the synchronization
..�.::;. AgilentTechnoiogie5 INEDAl.Kl171S'39492011
method is that since the grid estimator has a fixed oscillator
llJ]IIJf StOP 1 �El t aaA
frequency wo, exposure to large frequency variation would
result in undesirable power factor degradation (refer to Fig. 8).
Although increasing ksync minimizes the effect, the noise �/+ (\ (\ 1/\ \/1\/
suppression ability of the estimator would be compromised. IV �
Another drawback of the grid synchronization method is the
1\ !\ f\ (1\ !\ r\ (
need for a square root calculation in the amplitude identi­
\ I vJt.IV \l/ \ IV \l/
\ /1\ !

fier, which could increase the processing time of the digital
processor. A viable solution to this problem is using peak
,
detection on the output of the estimator to avoid the square
3

. If \ / \ / I /
\. V
!t
root calculation. fJ
The experimental results prove the effectiveness of the
(b) Reactive power controlling command i�"1 step
controller by demonstrating the inverter's ability of generating response
pure active power, pure reactive power, and a mix of active Fig. 10. Transient response of the inverter
and reactive power. The transient response demonstrates good
dynamic response of the control system.
[ l0] E. lung and S.-K. Sui, "Implementation of grid-connected single-phase
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