Design and Simulation of Grid Connected Inverters for Solar Photovoltaic Applications

Abstract

Solar photovoltaic (SPV) systems have become predominant in recent years and are beingwidely used as additional power supply to enhance power availability into the utility grid. Researchers have begun to explore more into the field of renewable energy sources (RES). Even though RES has environmental advantages, its unpredictable and intermittent nature, lack of proper technology, and low production efficiency has prevented RES to be a conventional energy source. Solar photovoltaic (SPV) systems produce electrical energy from solar energy. A solar panel converts the solar energy to DC electrical energy, after which a power inverter is used in order to convert DC power obtained from solar energy to AC power which can be fed to the grid. While feeding power from inverter to the grid, the synchronization of inverter output signal to that of the grid signal is necessary, without which failures and faults can occur in the grid which can damage electrical appliances. In the present work, simulation of a three-phase H-bridge voltage source inverter (VSI) is designed in MATLAB/Simulink platform. An LC filter is used to reduce the harmonic content of the inverter output. A synchronization technique is also developed for grid interconnection. A MULTISIM simulation model of a single-phase inverter along with an LC filter is prepared and finally a hardware model is fabricated.