Advanced Photovoltaic Inverter Control Development and Validation in a Controller-Hardware-in-the-Loop Test Bed

Conference · Mon Nov 06 23:00:00 EST 2017 · IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/ECCE.2017.8095994· OSTI ID:1424898

Prabakar, Kumaraguru ^[1]; Shirazi, Mariko ^[1]; Singh, Akanksha ^[1]; Chakraborty, Sudipta ^[1]

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1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Penetration levels of solar photovoltaic (PV) generation on the electric grid have increased in recent years. In the past, most PV installations have not included grid-support functionalities. But today, standards such as the upcoming revisions to IEEE 1547 recommend grid support and anti-islanding functions-including volt-var, frequency-watt, volt-watt, frequency/voltage ride-through, and other inverter functions. These functions allow for the standardized interconnection of distributed energy resources into the grid. This paper develops and tests low-level inverter current control and high-level grid support functions. The controller was developed to integrate advanced inverter functions in a systematic approach, thus avoiding conflict among the different control objectives. The algorithms were then programmed on an off-the-shelf, embedded controller with a dual-core computer processing unit and field-programmable gate array (FPGA). This programmed controller was tested using a controller-hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) test bed setup using an FPGA-based real-time simulator. The CHIL was run at a time step of 500 ns to accommodate the 20-kHz switching frequency of the developed controller. The details of the advanced control function and CHIL test bed provided here will aide future researchers when designing, implementing, and testing advanced functions of PV inverters.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S), SunShot Initiative
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1424898
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-5D00-71064
• Journal Information: IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), Journal Name: IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE) Vol. 2017; ISSN 2329-3721
• Publisher: IEEE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
advanced inverter control functions
controller-hardware-in-the-loop
inverter testbed