DESIGN AND SIMULATION OF GRID CONNECTED PV SYSTEM

Abstract

The human activities contribute to the global warming of the planet. As a result, every country strives to reduce carbon emissions. The world is facing not only the depletion of fossil fuels, but also its rise in prices which causes the worldwide economic instability. Several measures are being undertaken by the Governments around the world to explore alternative energy sources and to achieve pollution reduction. Solar photovoltaic system is one of the most important renewable and green energy source to generate electrical power and the fastest growing power generation in the world. Solar photovoltaic system may be standalone system or grid connected system. In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the grid connected PV systems being connected to the distribution network. As a result, high quality, low harmonic distortion current injection into the grid is essential. To achieve this, careful consideration of the inverter control is necessary. In this work, design and simulation of grid connected 8 kW solar photovoltaic system is presented under various load and atmospheric conditions. The inverter control for integrating the PV system to the grid is also presented. The three phase inverter works as a multi-functional device, used to supply the power to the grid as power converter as well as harmonic eliminator. The inverter control is simulated using three control algorithms viz. SRFT, ISCT, Icos∅, under various load and different environmental conditions in MATLAB/SIMULINK. The inverter control schemes reduce the harmonics in the source current due to various loads in the system and the unity power factor on the supply side is maintained. Thus, the power quality is improved due to reduced THD.