3830 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO.

7, JULY 2014

Modeling, Analysis, and Design of Multifunction

Grid-Interfaced Inverters With Output LCL Filter
Zhixiang Zou, Student Member, IEEE, Zheng Wang, Member, IEEE, and Ming Cheng, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the model, performance and clean power transferring from aggregated DG
control, and implementation of a multifunction grid-interfaced in- network to the distributed grid. The output current of the mul-
verter with output LCL filter, which can provide high performance tifunction DG includes two parts: one is the sinusoidal current,
active power current and compensate the existent harmonics si-
multaneously in a distributed network. Equipped with LCL filter, and the other is the low order harmonic current for the function
the proposed multifunction inverter offers reduced switching har- of active power filter.
monics and superior output current shapes. However, the multi- Although having different front stages (such as photovoltaic,
function inverter with output LCL filter brings some challenges, wind turbine, etc.), the grid-interfaced inverter is the key part of
including LCL resonance, phase lag, and complexity in system de- the multifunction DG system. In addition to the state-of-the-art
sign. To address these issues, this paper analyzes and develops
general Thevenin/Norton models for the multifunction grid invert- high-frequency pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) technology, the
ers with LCL filter. Based on the general models of system, this interfaced inverter can provide the sinusoidal and the compen-
paper presents guidelines of the control and the procedure of filter sating harmonic current simultaneously with advanced current
design for this application. In particular, a proportional-resonant control techniques. The repetitive control and multiple reso-
(PR) plus odd-harmonic repetitive control (OHRC) scheme is de- nant control (MRC) schemes, originating from internal model
signed for the outer current loop. The phase compensation method
and detailed design criteria for the proposed control scheme are principle, have been commonly adopted in the application of
presented. Furthermore, the proposed OHRC scheme is compared multifunction grid inverters [13][16]. These control schemes
with the previous multiple resonant control (MRC) based on their can provide large gains at the selective frequencies, and there-
internal relationship. Simulation and experimental results are pro- fore offer superior tracking ability for both the fundamental and
vided to validate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed harmonic signals. Additionally, the virtual impedance method
control strategy.
is another promising control approach with the advantages of
Index TermsCurrent control, grid-interfaced inverter, LCL superior performance and easy implementation. In [17], the
filter, power quality. proposed multifunction inverter utilizes harmonic impedance to
achieve power quality improvement, and different compensat-
I. INTRODUCTION ing modes can be easily switched due to the feature of equivalent
inverter impedance.
N the recent years, the renewable energy and the distributed
I generation (DG) are in the limelight. More and more at-
tention and research work have been given to the operation
In order to further improve the output current, a higher order
LCL filter has been used in place of the conventional L or LC
filter. Recently, the LCL filter has been widely applied to the
of grid-interfaced inverters for DG [1][9]. According to the grid-interfaced inverters and active filters [4][9], [20][22]. It
mandatory requirements of grid [10], the DG system is required has been verified that the LCL filter offers a better smooth-
to integrate the functions of both the conventional power plants ing output current [5][7]. Moreover, this filter uses smaller
and the active filters. Therefore, the concept of multifunction inductance that leads to smaller harmonic voltage drop across
DG that contains normal power delivery and additional power the output filter [21]. The multifunction grid inverter with out-
quality improvement functionalities is proposed [11][19]. The put LCL filter has been first proposed in [12], which mainly
multifunction DG provides a flexible way to maintain high focuses on the concept of providing nonactive power to com-
pensate distorted current. Nevertheless, the in-depth study and
design scenario for the LCL based multifunction grid inverter
Manuscript received June 6, 2013; revised July 31, 2013; accepted August has been seldom involved in the literatures thereafter. Until re-
30, 2013. Date of current version February 18, 2014. This paper was presented
in part at the 5th IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition, Septem- cently, a hybrid voltage and current control scheme is proposed
ber 1519, 2013, Denver, CO, USA. This work was supported in part by the for the LCL filter based DG to compensate harmonics caused
National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 program) under Grant by nonlinear load nearby [18]. The proposed hybrid scheme can
2013CB035603, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(No. 51007008 and No. 51137001), in part by the Doctoral Fund of Ministry achieve power quality improvement without harmonic current
of Education of China (No. 20100092120043), and in part by the Fundamental extraction, and guarantees smooth transition during the grid-
Research Funds for the Central Universities. Recommended for publication by connected/island mode transfer. Different from these previous
Associate Editor A. M. Trzynadlowski.
The authors are with the School of Electrical Engineering, Southeast Univer- literatures, this paper aims at exploring the inherent features
sity, Nanjing 210096, China (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]. of the LCL filter based multifunction grid inverters and offering
hk; [email protected]). generalized models as well as control design for this application.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Thus, Thevenin/Norton equivalent models for current controlled
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2013.2280724 methods are developed, which offers general design guidelines

0885-8993 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
ZOU et al.: MODELING, ANALYSIS, AND DESIGN OF MULTIFUNCTION GRID-INTERFACED INVERTERS WITH OUTPUT LCL FILTER 3831

the aim of this paper is to study the control performance of

the output current of multifunction grid inverter, a simplified
configuration has been taken, where a dc source takes place of
the renewable energy source. As is shown in the figure, the DG
system is connected to the point of common coupling (PCC) via
an LCL filter. In this paper, a symmetrical and stiff three-phase
distributed network is discussed, and the fundamental frequency
of the PCC voltage is theoretically constant under different
working conditions. A nonlinear load is connected to the PCC,
which will be likely to distort the grid current of distributed
networks. Lg , Lg f , Lf f , and Lr are the grid inductor, the grid-
side filter inductor, the inverter-side filter inductor, and the line
inductor of nonlinear load. icj , i1j , i2j ,ig j , and ilj (j = a, b, c)
represent the three-phase capacitor currents, the output currents
Fig. 1. System configuration of the three-phase multifunction grid-interfaced
inverter for DG.
of the inverter, the output currents of DG, the grid currents, and
the line currents of the nonlinear load, respectively. E and Vdc
are the grid voltage and the dc-link voltage. p and q are the dc
for the current controller. Based on the equivalent models, a components of the instantaneous active and reactive power, and
proportional-resonant (PR) controller plus odd-harmonic repet- ploss corresponds to the loss of the interfaced inverter system.
itive control (OHRC) scheme is proposed and detailed design To alleviate the LCL resonance as well as provide superior
criteria are presented to ensure good steady-state performance current regulation, a dual closed-loop control structure includ-
in our scenario. Furthermore, the MRC scheme, being efficient ing an inner capacitor current loop and an outer current loop
and popular these days, is also explicated here. The relationship is employed in both the power delivery and the multifunction
between OHRC and MRC is included later in this paper, and the mode. The inner capacitor employs a proportional gain to damp
analysis shows that these two control schemes are essentially the LCL resonance, while the outer current loop plays a leading
the same. role to generate the desired current shapes by using the current
On the other hand, the adoption of LCL filter brings some controller. For the operation of normal power delivery mode,
challenges into the practical applications. One of the well-known i2j is controlled to track the sinusoidal reference if r ef while
challenges is the serious filter resonance. Fortunately, a cascade Vdc should be kept stable. if r ef can either be set directly or
dual-loop control structure or active damping method can allevi- calculated from the power regulation loop. Under the circum-
ate the LCL resonance issue well [23], [24]. However, the inner stance, the instantaneous pq calculator and the compensating
current loop based on active damping will introduce consider- current calculator are not activated. For the operation of mul-
able phase lag, especially at the harmonic frequencies. To ad- tifunction mode, the instantaneous pq calculator is activated to
dress this issue, this paper studies the feature of LCL filter with calculate the power transfer between grid and nonlinear load.
corresponding inner loop and presents a phase-compensating The compensating current reference ihr ef can be generated by
method for actual implementation. Other challenging study of the compensating current calculator based on the instantaneous
LCL filter based multifunction inverter includes complex filter p q theory [26], and i2j is controlled to track the summa-
design. Although the methodology for filter parameters has been tion of ihr ef and if r ef by the dual closed-loop control system.
reported in [3], [21] and [25], this paper proposes a handy ap- Therefore, the control objective of the multifunction grid in-
proach of filter design specific for the multifunction grid invert- verter system can be switched to track the reference signal if r ef
ers to improve the performance of overall system and minimize or if r ef + ihr ef under various working conditions.
the reactive power loss. Referring to [3] and [21], the active power current and the
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: 1) in Section II, compensating current can be efficiently generated with proper
the system description of multifunction DG is presented; 2) the LCL parameters. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the LCL filer
equivalent models of the grid-interfaced inverters for multifunc- can minimize the reactive power loss, and improve the robust-
tion DG are built in Section III; 3) based on the proposed models, ness as well as the performance of the DG system. The LCL
the detailed control design and analysis for the corresponding filter design should be organized elaborately to achieve the ac-
strategy are proposed in Section IV and the relationship between ceptable performance. First, since Lf f is related to the current
OHRC and MRC is also presented therein; 4) the simulation and ripple amplitude directly [3], the minimum value of Lf f can be
experimental results are shown in Section V to validate the ef- derived as follows:
fectiveness of the proposed control strategy; 5) final conclusions Vdc
are drawn in Section VI. Lf f n = (1)
2In m ax fn
Lf f = max{Lf f n } (2)
II. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION n N

Fig. 1 shows the configuration and control diagrams of the where In m ax is the tolerable current ripple amplitude at the nth
multifunction grid-interfaced inverter for individual DG. Since order frequency, and fn is the selective frequency of grid current.
3832 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO. 7, JULY 2014

In this application, the objectives are to generate active power

current and compensate for harmonic current up to the 15th
order (n 15). From (1), the minimum inductor value for each
selective frequency (Lf f n ) can be acquired. The inverter-side
filter inductor Lf f is designed as the maximum value among
all those values for different selective frequencies, which is
described in (2).
Second, the expression of Lg f and Cf can be derived by the
resonant frequency of the LCL filter. Since the multifunction
DG system aims at tracking both the fundamental and the har-
monic frequencies waveform, the resonant frequency should be
chosen as twice of the highest compensating current frequency.
Therefore, the expression of Lg f and Cf can be acquired as
follows:

Lf f + Lg f Fig. 2. Equivalent models of multifunction grid inverter in (a) normal power
r es = 2com h = (3) delivery mode and (b) multifunction mode.
Lf f Lg f Cf
where r es is the desired resonant frequency of the LCL filter,
and com h is the highest compensating current frequency. their corresponding frequencies. So, Zof (or Zoh ) is meaning-
Finally, the reactive power of the LCL is considered, which less at the harmonic frequencies (or the fundamental frequency).
mainly depends on the impedance of the LCL filter. Assuming In the multifunction mode, the controlled objective is to out-
the equivalent resistors of the inductors are zero, the impedance put active power current plus compensating harmonic current si-
of the LCL filter is multaneously. The equivalent model at fundamental frequency is
j(Lf f + Lg f 3 Lf f Lg f Cf ) as same as that of the normal power delivery mode, but the model
ZL C L (j) = . (4) at the harmonic frequencies should be reconsidered according
1 2 Cf Lg f
to the feature of multifunction mode. Since the compensating
The value of the impedance can be designed below one de- current is controlled to compensate the existent harmonics, a
fined threshold as ZL C L  Zm ax  Since Lf f and r es have controlled harmonic current source is developed in the model
been chosen in the first and second step, the value of Lg f and at the harmonic frequencies. Besides, the equivalent model re-
Cf can be calculated by (3), (4), and its boundary condition as lated to the nonlinear factors can combine with this controlled
follows: harmonic current source to form the equivalent model at the


Lf f + Lg f harmonic frequencies. As a matter of convenience for analysis,

= r es
Lf f Lg f Cf the model related to the nonlinear factors is transformed from
. (5) the Thevenin model shown in Fig. 2(a) to an equivalent Norton

 

 j(L + L 3
L L C )  model in the multifunction mode. With these configurations,
 
ff gf f f gf f 
 = Zm ax 
1 2 Cf Lg f the equivalent model for multifunction model is illustrated in
Fig. 2(b), where ioh is the expected compensating current and
III. MODELING OF MULTIFUNCTION GRID INVERTER ih is an equivalent harmonic current source emulating the cur-
rent distortion in the distributed grid. Specifically, iof or ioh
Since the multifunction grid inverter for DG is controlled
corresponds to the reference current at different frequencies di-
to output very sinusoidal current in the normal power delivery
rectly, which theoretically equals to if r ef and ihr ef mentioned
mode, a Norton equivalent model is developed seeing from the
in Section II. Zo (Zof + Zoh ) can be obtained approximately
PCC at the fundamental frequency. The output current is usually
as Zo = E/i2 in the following part of this section.
deteriorated by some nonlinear factors, such as low-frequency
noises, deadband effect and measurement offsets in an actual
system. The distorted component of output current is commonly
A. Remarks
reflected at the harmonic frequencies, and can be attributed to
the deteriorated output voltage of grid inverter caused by these According to the equivalent models shown in Fig. 2, it can be
nonlinear factors. Therefore, a Thevenin equivalent model at concluded that: 1) Zof is expected to be infinite value, thereby
the harmonic frequencies is also incorporated to demonstrate offering sinusoidal current output at fundamental frequency;
these nonlinear factors. Fig. 2(a) shows the equivalent model 2) Zoh is also expected to be infinite values at harmonic fre-
for normal power delivery mode, where iof is the expected out- quencies, and therefore, blocks harmonic current injecting into
put current in the power delivery mode, and von represents the distributed grid in the power delivery mode and provides accu-
output voltage that related to the nonlinear factors of inverter. rate harmonic current tracking/compensating in the multifunc-
Zof and Zoh are the equivalent impedances at fundamental tion mode.
frequency and harmonics, respectively. It is important to stress From Fig. 1, ignoring parasitic resistor of the inductors,
that the values of equivalent impedances are only available at the differential equations describing the dynamics of the grid
ZOU et al.: MODELING, ANALYSIS, AND DESIGN OF MULTIFUNCTION GRID-INTERFACED INVERTERS WITH OUTPUT LCL FILTER 3833

Fig. 3. Simplified block diagram for the DG system.

Fig. 4. Equivalent LCL circuit with capacitor current inner loop.

inverter system can be obtained as

i1a (t) ua (t) Vca (t) where Zf f = sLf f , Zg f = sLg f , Zc = 1/(sCf ). It is noticed
d Vdc 1
i1b (t) = ub (t) Vcb (t) (6) that the equivalent impedance consists of two parts: one is re-
dt Lf f Lf f
i1c (t) uc (t) Vcc (t) lated to the frequency response of Gc (s), which depends on the
current controller design; and the other relates to the parameters
i2a (t) Vca (t) Ea (t) of control plant (i.e., grid inverter and LCL filter), whose value
d 1 1
i2b (t) = Vcb (t) Eb (t) (7) is constant at selective frequency. To achieve high performance
dt Lg f Lg f control purpose, Zo as well as Gc (s) is expected to be infinite
i2c (t) Vcc (t) Ec (t)
values at the fundamental and selective frequencies. As a result,
Vca (t) i1a (t) i2a (t) the output current can track the references well or reject the
d 1 1 nonlinear factors according to the equivalent models shown in
Vcb (t) = i1b (t) i2b (t) (8)
dt Cf Cf Fig. 2.
Vcc (t) i1c (t) i2c (t)

where Vcj , Ej (j = a, b, c) are the phase-to-ground voltages of IV. CONTROL DESIGN

the capacitors and the grid; [ua ub uc ]T is the PWM modulated
To provide high performance current regulation for multi-
vector of the system.
function interfaced inverters in the DG system, the control sys-
Since a symmetrical three-phase distributed system without
tem should meet two requirements: one is the zero steady-state
zero-sequence component is investigated here, (6)(8) can be
tracking error, and the other is the superior dynamic perfor-
transformed from static abc frame into static frame as
mance. The capacitor current inner loop is playing a vital role for
follows:
      the dynamic performance, and kc is suggested to select as large
d i1 (t) Vdc u (t) 1 Vc (t)
= (9) as possible in the stability range that leads to high bandwidth.
dt i1 (t) Lf f u (t) Lf f Vc (t) On the other hand, Zo is expected to be infinite values at the
      interesting frequency according to the equivalent models. It is
d i2 (t) 1 Vc (t) 1 E (t)
= (10) clearly seen that the feature of Zo is mainly dependent of the
dt i2 (t) Lg f Vc (t) Lg f E (t)
      characteristics of the current controller Gc (s) of the outer loop.
d Vc (t) 1 i1 (t) 1 i2 (t) Thus, the gains of Gc (s) should approach infinity at the interest-
= (11)
dt Vc (t) Cf i1 (t) Cf i2 (t) ing frequency. With these considerations, the proposed current
control scheme that combines a PR controller with a comple-
where the variables with subscript or denote the axis of
mentary plug-in OHRC, will offer zero steady-state tracking
frame. Obviously, (9)(11) can be treated as two identical
error and good dynamic response.
independent subsystems. For simplicity, Vdc is assumed
constant, both the fundamental current reference if r ef and
the compensating current reference ihr ef can be regarded as A. Phase Compensation
periodic signals. With these assumptions, the simplified block The capacitor current inner loop is employed to damp the
diagram for the overall system is shown in Fig. 3 derived by LCL resonance and alleviate dynamic perturbations. From a
(9)(11), where the power regulation loop, the voltage regulator, physical point of view, the gain of inner loop kc can be regarded
and the compensating current calculator are ignored in the as a virtual resistor in parallel with capacitor [24]. Then, the
analysis. The reference current ir ef is the summation of ihr ef equivalent LCL circuit can be revised as shown in Fig. 4.
and if r ef . Gc (s) and Gin v (s) represent the transfer functions Thus, the transfer function and the frequency response of the
of the current controller and inverter with its modulation unit equivalent LCL circuit shown in Fig. 4 can be obtained in (13)
illustrated in Fig. 1. It should be noted that Gin v (s) can be and (14), respectively
regarded as a constant proportional gain kin v when the carrier
kc
frequency is much larger than the output current frequency. GL C L (s) = (13)
Lf f Lg f Cf s3 + Lg f Cf kc s2 + (Lf f + Lg f )s
Consequently, Zo is obtained from Fig. 3 as follows:
E(s) kc
Zo (s) = GL C L (j) =
i2 (s) Lg f Cf kc 2 + j((Lf f + Lg f ) Lf f Lg f Cf 3 )

kc Zc kin v Gc (s)+ kc Zg f kin v + Zg f Zc + Zf f Zc + Zg f Zf f = A()ej ( ) (14)

=
kc kin v + Zc + Zf f where () = arctan(Lg f + Lf f Lg f Lf f Cf 2 )/(Lg f
(12) Cf kc ).
3834 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO. 7, JULY 2014

Fig. 5. Phase plots of G LCL under different inner loop gains. Fig. 6. Bode plots of control plant and LPF.

From (14), it is obvious that the phase lag of equivalent LCL

filter increases with increasing of kc below the resonant fre- bandwidth to achieve good dynamic performance, especially in
quency. Fig. 5 shows the phase plots of G LCL when kc = 0, the normal power delivery control mode. On the other hand, the
kc = 5, and kc = 10, respectively. With the introduction of functionality of OHRC is to provide infinite gain (i.e., infinite
kc , the phase lag can not be ignored and phase compensation impedance) at the interesting frequencies in the steady state.
is necessary. Therefore, a phase-compensating term Gf should It should be noted that the current controller introduces plenty
be employed in the current controller to compensate the phase of poles on the imaginary axis to the closed-loop response. These
lag as well as enhance the robustness of the overall system. To poles are symmetrical, and determining the tracking ability of
achieve zero phase compensation, Gf is chosen in the following the controller. However, the stability of the overall system will
form: be dominated by these poles. To enhance the system stability,
the expression of the current controller can be revised as
Gf (j) = ej ( ) . (15)
c s es(T s N /2) Q(s)
Gc (s) = kp + kr ko
Specifically, the expression of Gf in a digital system is illus- s2
+ 2c s + 1 2
1 + es(T s N /2) Q(s)
trated as (18)
( ) N
where low-pass filters (LPFs) are introduced in both the PR and
Gf (z) = z N 1 = z 2 (16) the OHRC schemes. In this scenario, a classical first order LPF
where N1 are the leading phase steps and N are the sampling Glpf (s) = c /(s + c ) is adopted in the ideal PR controller, and
times per fundamental cycle. c is the cutoff frequency. To avoid aggravating the phase issue,
a zero phase shift LPF Q(s) = 4a Ts2 s2 /(4 Ts2 s2 ) + 1 (0 < a
B. Current Controller < 1) is used for the OHRC. With the introduction of LPFs, the
poles of the current controller will be pushed into the left half
Considering the main harmonics in a distributed grid are odd plane, and the system stability will be enhanced. However, the
harmonics, Zo is expected to approach infinite values at the fun- magnitudes of frequency response above the cutoff frequency
damental and odd-harmonic frequencies, which could provide are limited and the transient response is deteriorated by the
sinusoidal active power current output and efficient odd har- LPFs. So, a trade-off design should be made between track-
monic alleviation. Thus, a PR controller plus OHRC scheme is ing performance and system stability for the cutoff frequency.
implemented here, express as Referring to [27], c values of 515 rad/s have been found to
s es(T s N /2) provide a good compromise for PR controller. Considering the
Gc (s) = kp + kr 2 ko (17) harmonic compensation functionality, the cutoff frequency of
s + 12 1 + es(T s N /2)
     Q(s) should be designed above Nyquist frequency to maintain
P R T er m OH RC
the tracking ability. Then, the harmonics or disturbance within
where kp , kr , and ko are the proportional gain, the resonant this range can be completely eliminated by the OHRC. Un-
gain, and the repetitive gain, respectively. 1 is the fundamental fortunately, in an LCL filter based grid-interfaced system, the
angular frequency and Ts is the sampling interval. crossover frequency of the control plant (i.e., grid inverter with
Theoretically, the output of the PR controller is only one sam- LCL filter) is usually less than the Nyquist frequency. It may
pling interval delayed from the reference in a digital system, be unnecessary to design the cutoff frequency as high as the
while the OHRC updates the output signal every N /2 sampling Nyquist frequency, but close to the crossover frequency would
intervals, i.e., half of the fundamental cycle. Thus, the output be good enough for practical application. In our scenario, the
of the OHRC can be assumed constant and the dynamic perfor- bode plots of control plant and deigned Q(s) is shown in Fig. 6.
mance mainly depends on the characteristic of the PR controller As far as the current controller of outer loop is concerned, the
at the beginning of transient stage. After N /2 sampling inter- inner loop with active damping functionality should be incor-
vals, the OHRC starts to update the control signal. With this porated in the control plant. Hence, the transfer function of G
consideration, the PR controller has been designed to get a wide LCL (s) of (13) is used here to represent the control plant.
ZOU et al.: MODELING, ANALYSIS, AND DESIGN OF MULTIFUNCTION GRID-INTERFACED INVERTERS WITH OUTPUT LCL FILTER 3835

represent high values at these interesting frequencies, allowing

the current controller provides good steady-state performance.
Returning to the equivalent models shown in Fig. 2, if a
Thevenin model of DG is considered, Zo (or Zof , Zoh ) is in
series with voltage sources (i.e., grid source and equivalent DG
source). Therefore, the voltage distortion or small-scare distur-
bances in the distributed network will be alleviated by the equiv-
alent impedances and the interactions among different DGs can
be minimized.

C. Relationship Between OHRC and MRC

As can be seen in Fig. 7(b), the characteristics of OHRC can
be summarized as a set of band pass of filters, which generate
large gains at the odd-harmonic frequencies. On the contrary, the
paralleled MRC scheme can provide almost the same charac-
teristics at these selective frequencies. Based on the expression
of the exponential series, the transfer function of OHRC can be
expanded as follows:

es(T s N /2)
Fig. 7. (a) Block diagram and (b) frequency response of the proposed current Gohr c (s) = ko
controller. 1 + es(T s N /2)

4ko  s
= ko + (20)
From (18), it is evident that the control gains of the current N Ts s2 + ((2k 1)1 )2
k =1
controller have a strong influence on the output current shape.
Thus, these gains must be selected elaborately in order to achieve where 2k1 is the order of the odd-harmonic frequencies. From
good performance and high stability margin. Due to the separa- (20), it can be seen that the OHRC can be derived as a PR term
tion principle, the PR controller and the OHRC can be designed and an infinite-paralleled MRC term. Based on this equation, it
independently. Since the main functionality of PR controller is can be concluded that the characteristic of the MRC scheme is
responsible for the fundamental current and dynamic response, as same as that of the OHRC at the selective frequencies. For
the bandwidth of PR controller is designed to be at least ten digital implementation, OHRC occupies more memory cells
times of the fundamental frequency. Meanwhile, the phase mar- than that of MRC, but with less computation.
gin of PR controller is designed larger than 45 to maintain the In normal three-phase three-wire distributed system, the fifth-
stability. Based on these criteria, kp = 2.5 and ki = 100 are and seventh-order harmonics are dominant in the grid current.
selected in our scenario. Besides, the current tracking accuracy For simplicity, the paralleled fifth- and seventh-order MRC can
can be judged by the equivalent models as follows: be used and provides the same performance as the OHRC does
Zo (s) at these two frequencies with proper resonant gains. Replacing
i2 = io . (19) the OHRC with the 5,7th MRC scheme, the responsibility is to
Zo (s) + Lg s
provide high gains at fifth- and seventh-order harmonic frequen-
With respect to the magnitude of PR controller, Zo (s) can be cies, thus achieves similar tracking or suppressing performance
easily obtained, and it represents high value at the fundamental as mentioned before. It should also be noted that the phase
frequency. Substituting Zo (j 1 ) into (19), it indicates that i2 lag of grid inverter is very significant at the fifth- and seventh-
io at the fundamental frequency, allowing the PR controller to order harmonic frequencies as shown in Fig. 5 because of the
provide good tracking performance. Furthermore, the criterion LCL filter and inner loop, and it will lead to unsatisfied per-
for choosing the repetitive gain of OHRC is also following formance and stability issue. Therefore, a phase-compensating
the tracking accuracy of (19), and restricted by the stability term should also be added in the resonant control
boundary (i.e., ko < 2). With this consideration, ko = 1.2 is
selected here, which ensures good current tracking ability up to cos d s sin d
Gr es (s) = {sin(t + d )} = + 2 (21)
15th-order harmonic. s2 + n2 s + n2
With respect to (18) and the proposed control gains, the con-
trol block diagram and the corresponding frequency response where d is the compensating angle of the resonant controller
are shown in Fig. 7. It can be noted, large gains are available and n is the selective frequency. Actually, the expression of
at both the fundamental and the odd-harmonic frequencies. Be- the compensated MRC can also be expanded by the OHRC with
sides, the phase shifts at these interesting frequencies are zero. compensating term Gf [28]. In addition, the LPF Glpf (s) can
Therefore, the equivalent Thevenin/Norton impedance Zo (s) be introduced to move the poles into the left half plane, and the
3836 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO. 7, JULY 2014

TABLE I
SYSTEM PARAMETERS

expression becomes
cos d (c s + c2 ) sin d c2
Gr es (s) = + 2 .
s2 2
+ 2c s + n + c 2 s + 2c s + n2 + c2
(22)

V. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION

A. Simulation Results
To validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy,
two simulation studies are carried out. A DG system is con-
nected to the distributed grid, and a nonlinear load is used in
this scenario to generate harmonics. The system configuration
is same as that in Fig. 1, and the simulation parameters are listed
in Table I.
First, Fig. 8(a) shows the grid current waveforms regulated
Fig. 8. Simulated performance of the proposed strategy controlled DG in
by PR plus OHRC in normal power delivery mode, while the normal power delivery mode: (a) grid current; (b) tracking error of current
compensating term Gf is not incorporated in the control system. controller without the compensating term; (c) grid current; (d) tracking error of
Fig. 8(b) shows the corresponding tracking error of the current current controller with the compensating term.
outer loop. Obviously, the grid current is distorted and the track-
ing error is divergence, and thus the overall system is unstable. Fig. 1 is built, and the photograph of system is given in Fig. 10.
Fig. 8(c) and (d) show the grid current waveforms and corre- The experimental prototype of the interfaced inverter is based on
sponding tracking error controlled by the same strategy with a a Semikron AN-8005 (a three-phase IGBT inverter). The three-
phase-compensating term Gf . The THD value of grid current is phase interfaced inverter is controlled using a dSPACE DS1104
1.102%, and the results indicate that the compensating term is controller card. A rectifier with paralleled capacitor and resis-
necessary in an LCL filter based DG system and enhances the tor is connected to the PCC to generate harmonic current. The
stability of the overall system. system parameter values are same as the simulation parameters
Then, Fig. 9 shows the simulated waveforms in the multi- listed in Table I.
function mode, where the harmonic current is generated by the With the parameters listed in Table I, the resonant frequency
nonlinear load. In Fig. 9(a), the injected harmonic current of of LCL filter can be derived by (3), which is 1080 Hz. Thus, the
Fig. 9(b) has been alleviated by the multifunction DG, and the output of LCL filter allows the inverter to efficiently compen-
total harmonic distortion (THD) value of compensated grid cur- sate harmonic current up to 15th order of 50 Hz fundamental
rent is 2.785%. The output current of DG is shown in Fig. 9(c), frequency. Besides, the cutoff frequency of Q(z) is selected
the waveforms consist of both the fundamental active power cur- as 1500 Hz, which is twice of the highest compensating cur-
rent and harmonic compensating current. The root mean square rent frequency. The compensating term Gf (z) = z 4 is chosen
(rms) of tracking error of the current outer loop is less than 0.5 in our scenario with 4 steps phase lead being determined by
A as shown in Fig. 9(d). The results indicate that the proposed experiments [29].
control strategy can achieve efficient power delivery and power
quality improvement. C. Experimental Results
Fig. 11(a) shows the measured output current of normal
B. Experimental Setup
power delivery operation by using PR plus OHRC scheme, and
To verify the multifunction interfaced inverter for DG experi- the corresponding THD value is 1.296%. Fig. 11(b) shows the
mentally, the laboratory setup with the same configuration as in grid current and the output current of the multifunction mode
ZOU et al.: MODELING, ANALYSIS, AND DESIGN OF MULTIFUNCTION GRID-INTERFACED INVERTERS WITH OUTPUT LCL FILTER 3837

Fig. 11. Measured current waveforms (x: 10 ms/div, y: 5 A/div): (a) output
current of DG in normal power delivery mode; (b) grid current and DG outputs in
multifunction mode (Upper: grid current phase A; Lower: DG output currents).

Fig. 9. Simulated waveforms of proposed strategy controlled DG in the mul-

tifunction mode: (a) compensated grid current; (b) nonlinear load current;
(c) output current of DG; (d) tracking error of current controller.

Fig. 10. Experimental setup.

operation with nonlinear loads. The nonlinear load is connected

to the upstream of DG as that in Fig. 1 with 17.692% harmonic
distortion, while the THD value of grid current is 2.939% after
compensating.
Fig. 12(a) compares the reference signal and the output cur-
rent of the grid-interfaced inverter operated in multifunction
mode, while the steady-state tracking error is illustrated be-
low. Seen from Fig. 12(a), the reference current waveform is
completely covered by the measured output current waveform.
Obviously, two current waveforms are totally superposing in this
figure. Besides, the value of the steady-state error is relatively Fig. 12. Performance of multifunction grid-interfaced inverter (x: 10 ms/div):
small, which is less than 0.5 A. Fig. 12(b) shows the dynamic (a) steady-state performance (Upper: reference current and measured current,
5 A/div; Lower: tracking error, 1 A/div); (b) transient performance (Upper: grid
performance of the multifunction interfaced inverter when the current phase A, 10 A/div; Lower: DG output currents, 5 A/div).
active power current reference suddenly changed. The active
3838 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 29, NO. 7, JULY 2014

Fig. 14. Grid current spectrum of the OHRC scheme versus the MRC scheme.

TABLE II
COMPARISON RESULTS

Fig. 13. Measured current waveforms (x: 10 ms/div, y: 5 A/div) of (a) MRC-
controlled DG without the compensating terms; (b) MRC-controlled DG plus
compensating terms.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper has introduced a generalized way to design and
power of the output current increased from 3.5 to 8 A, and the
operate the LCL filter based multifunction grid-interfaced invert-
THD values of every cycle in the transient stage are shown in
ers for DG system. Being of a multifunction DG, it offers two
the figure.
operation modes, including normal power delivery and power
Second, the MRC scheme has been investigated in the mul-
quality improvement, to meet different grid requirements in a
tifunction DG application. Fig. 13(a) shows the output current
distributed network. To optimize LCL filter design, this paper
regulated by the PR plus the fifth- and seventh-order resonant
proposes a handy approach specific for the multifunction DG ap-
controller. Without the phase-compensating term, the output
plication. By analyzing the output features of multifunction grid
current is distorted and oscillates at the interesting frequency.
inverter in the distributed network, equivalent Thevenin/Norton
Fig. 13(b) shows the output current controlled by the PR plus
models are proposed for both two operational modes and pro-
the fifth- and seventh-order resonant controller, while the phase-
vide general design guidelines for current controller. Based on
compensating terms have been employed. The waveforms are
the equivalent models, a current control strategy integrating PR
quite sinusoidal and the corresponding THD value is 2.187%.
and OHRC is proposed to achieve high performance tracking
Finally, the comparative results of waveforms using the PR
accuracy of the current regulation. The detail design criteria and
plus the OHRC scheme and the PR plus the 5, 7th MRC scheme
a phase-compensating method are also given in this paper. Con-
are presented. The low-order harmonic spectrum of the mea-
sidering the characteristic of MRC is similar to that of OHRC,
sured grid current is plotted in Fig. 14. Both the normal power
the relationship between MRC and OHRC is discussed, and
delivery and the multifunction modes are performed, and the
the corresponding control strategy is analyzed. It is proven that
corresponding harmonic spectrums are demonstrated. It can be
the OHRC-controlled multifunction grid inverter provides better
seen that the OHRC scheme is more efficient than the MRC
performance than the MRC scheme but occupies more memory
scheme.
cells in a digital control system. Simulation and experimental
Table II lists detailed experimental results of grid current
results are given to verify the advantages and effectiveness of
with OHRC and MRC scheme under different operation con-
the proposed control strategy.
ditions. The data in Table II clearly indicate that the OHRC
controlled multifunction grid inverter can accurately track the
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