NPC Photovoltaic Grid-Connected Inverter using

Proportional-Resonant Controller
Hossein Dehghani Tafti, Student Member, IEEE Lim Ziyou, Student Member, IEEE
Ali I. Maswood, Senior Member, IEEE Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N)
Abhisek Ukil, Senior Member, IEEE Interdisciplinary Graduate School
Ooi H. P. Gabriel, Student Member, IEEE Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract—Multi-megawatt photovoltaic (PV) power plants are of irradiance is received by all the PV panels, there will only
widespread in electrical power systems because of the drastic be one maximum power point (MPP). However, the partial
decrease in the PV panel prices. The multi-string structure is
shading is most likely to happen in practice. Thus, different
considered for high power PV systems due to the increase in the
overall energy conversion efficiency and the modularity when amount of current is produced from the PV panels and strings
compared to the centralized topology. High power conversion due to the dissimilar irradiance levels. Therefore, a blocking
can be achieved easily using parallel connection of several grid- diode must be connected across each PV string to prevent any
tied two-level voltage-source inverters (2L-VSIs). However, this reverse current when any of the PV string current is lower than
configuration complicates the control designs. Thus, this issue
can be overcome by replacing these 2L-VSIs with a single the others. Besides that, multiple MPPs are exhibited in the
high power three-level neutral point clamped inverter (3L-NPC). I-V characteristics. As a result, the global maximum power
Moreover, the 3L-NPC inherits several attractive merits such as cannot be extracted directly by the single DC/AC inverter.
improved power quality with reduced total harmonic distortion Similar configuration is found in the multi-string topology,
(THD), increased overall efficiency as well as lower costs. In
addition to that, the voltage oriented control using proportional-
but the only difference is that each of the PV strings is
resonant (VOC-PR) in conjunction with the adaptive space vector connected to a DC/DC converter instead. By doing so, the
modulation (ASVM) technique is proposed for the large-scaled maximum power is extracted independently. Hence, the overall
PV system with grid-tied NPC inverter. The feasibility of the system output power is increased in this case compared to the
proposed control for the high power system is validated through centralized topology. These isolated DC/DC converters pro-
the simulation results under various environmental conditions.
Besides that, the dynamic mance of the system under the vide both boost capability as well as high frequency galvanic
proposed VOC-PR is greatly enhanced in comparison with the isolation to eliminate the common mode current. Thus, the
conventional method using PI controller. bulky low frequency isolation transformer can be eliminated
Index Terms—Photovoltaic systems, adaptive space vector at the AC side. Besides that, high modularity is found in
modulation, voltage oriented control, proportional-resonant con-
troller, NPC inverter the multi-string topology as it allows different types of PV
panels as well as different DC/DC converter topologies in
I. I NTRODUCTION the system. However, the implementation cost and the design
Renewable energy sources have produced large amount of complexity are higher than the centralized structure. Due to the
energy in the last few years and reached a total share of 19.3% optimization and increase in the power conversion efficiency,
in 2009 [1]. Photovoltaic (PV) is one of the renewable energy it is popularly chosen over the centralized topology and is
resources that grows rapidly with its total installed capacity considered as the state of art nowadays.
increased from 2GW in 2004 to 70GW in 2011. The rate of The classical two-level voltage source inverter (2L-VSI) is
such growth is initiated mainly due to the drastic decreased of well-known for its low cost and simple design which is usually
the PV panel cost from $4.90/W pk in 1998 to $1.28/W pk in implemented in the low PV power applications [4], [6]. In
2011 and it is expected to remain high in the upcoming years. the case of large-scaled PV plants, multiple 2L-VSIs must
To date, there are more than 50 utility scaled PV plants with be connected in parallel in order to deliver such high power
capacity of more than 30MW operating worldwide [2]–[5]. to the grid due to its limited semiconductor devices blocking
Large scale PV plants are usually designed based on two voltage capability. However, this is not a promising solution
different structures which are the centralized topology and as it complicates the control design and the complexity of
the multi-string topology. In the centralized structure, the the entire system. To avoid such complications, high-power
PV power is injected directly into the grid through a single multilevel grid-tied inverters are proposed for high power PV
DC/AC inverter. The amount of current produced from each applications. Hence, the multilevel converters have emerged
PV panel depends on the solar irradiance. If the same amount as the most viable solutions in this case due to their perceived
merits such as delivering excellent power quality with low har-
978-1-4799-7537-2/14/$31.00 ⃝
c 2014 IEEE monic contents as well as achieving better efficiency compared
 Fig. 1: Proposed multi-string PV system with grid-tied NPC inverter.

to the 2L-VSCs [7]. basically constructed with three distinct parts which are the
The output voltage waveforms of the multilevel converters PV strings, the DC/DC converters and the NPC inverter.
are generally synthesized from several levels of DC voltages. The number of series-connected PV panels required for
Thus, the multilevel converter topologies can be constructed each string can be determined based on the grid voltage
differently with multiple isolated DC-links [2], single DC- characteristics and the DC/DC converter topologies. However,
link configuration [8] or multiple series stacked DC-links [9]– the proposed system structure is not restricted to any particular
[11]. Based on the multi-string structure in this case, the PV types of PV panels and DC/DC converter topologies as long
strings together with the DC/DC converters can be directly as the desired minimum DC-link voltage is achieved. For
connected to these DC-links. Therefore, the number of series simplicity sake, a simple boost converter is considered in this
connected PV panels can be lesser since the DC-link voltage paper instead of an isolated DC/DC converter.
required is much lower. However, the voltage balancing and Each PV string is connected to an individual boost converter
power sharing between these PV strings are of a great concern to form a single PV string module. Hence, multiple PV string
especially when partial shading condition is experienced. In modules are connected in parallel to the single DC-bus that
the event of fault occurrence or partial shading, the output consists of two series capacitors (C1 and C2 ). However, it
power of the DC/DC converters has to be reduced to the lowest should be noted that the number of PV string modules utilized
in order to have a balanced system. As a result, there is a in the system will affect the current ratings of the three-phase
decrease in the overall efficiency when the PV power is not grid-tied NPC inverter design.
fully optimized. The grid-tied NPC inverter comprises two pairs of IGBT
In this paper, the grid-tied three-phase neutral-point- switches (Sa1 and Sa2 ) including the complementary (Sa1′ and
clamped (NPC) inverter is connected to multiple PV string Sa2′ ) in each phase. The NPC operates with three different
modules via a common DC-bus. The maximum power of switching states to synthesize the three output pole voltage
each PV string is extracted independently from the DC/DC stepped levels at Vdc /2, 0 and −Vdc /2 with respect to the
converter using MPPT control. Based on the proposed config- midpoint m of DC-link.
uration, the PV maximum power can be fully optimized even Despite the increasing demands of renewable energy re-
when partial shading condition is experienced. The three-phase sources, several regulations such as IEEE Std. 1547-2003
NPC inverter will then deliver the maximum power to the grid and IEEE Std. 929-2000 [12], [13] must be complied strictly
by controlling the DC-link voltage (Vdc ). A voltage oriented to ensure the power quality of the renewable grid-connected
control structure using proportional-resonant (VOC-PR) is system. Therefore, lower current harmonic distortion can be
proposed to achieve better dynamic performance and low achieved with the aid of output filter inductors which are con-
output current harmonic distortion. Besides that, the DC-link nected between the inverter and the grid. Due to the intelligent
capacitor voltage balancing is achieved through the adaptive synthesis of three-level output voltage waveforms, the filter
space vector modulation (ASVM) scheme. The performance of size can be much smaller compared to the conventional 2L-
the proposed large-scaled multi-string PV system using grid- VSI.
tied NPC inverter under VOC-PR control is evaluated under
III. PROPOSED CONTROL STRATEGY
various dynamic operating conditions.
There are two independent control strategies applied in the
II. PROPOSED SYSTEM STRUCTURE multi-string PV system as shown in Fig. 1 which are the boost
converter control and the proposed grid-tied NPC control. The
A comprehensive structure of the proposed large-scaled boost converter is controlled using a MPPT algorithm which
multi-string PV system is shown in Fig. 1. The system is adjusts the output voltage of each string (Vst ) based on the
 Fig. 2: Voltage oriented control using proportional integral Fig. 3: Voltage oriented control using proportional-resonant
(PI) controller. (PR) controller.

voltage of the maximum power point. In this study, perturb instead of using PI. The dynamic performance is evaluated and
and observe (P&O) algorithm is implemented for the MPPT compared between the conventional VOC-PI and the proposed
control [8]. Meanwhile, the proposed NPC control maintains VOC-PR in the following section IV.
the DC-link voltage by regulating the inverter output power. The proposed VOC-PR control scheme is shown in Fig. 3.
The proposed NPC control scheme consists of three parts: The DC-link voltage is tracked to its desired reference level,
phase-locked loop (PLL), voltage oriented control (VOC) similarly as the conventional VOC-PI, using a PI to generate
and adaptive space vector modulation (ASVM). The PLL the reference d-axis current. In the case of achieving a unity
calculates the phase voltage angle(θ ) by measuring the three- power factor operation, the reference q-axis current is set to
phase grid voltages. The computed voltage angle is used to zero. Hereafter, the reference dq-axis currents (Id∗ and Iq∗ ) are
ensure that the frequency of the grid current is matched to the converted to obtain their equivalent reference stationary frame
grid frequency. The implementations of VOC and ASVM for currents (Iα∗ and Iβ∗ ) using inverse park transformation. The re-
the grid-tied inverter are detailed in the following. spective αβ current errors are then obtained by subtracting the
reference stationary frame currents with the stationary frame
A. Voltage Oriented Control currents (Iα and Iβ ), obtained from the measured three-phase
The VOC is conventionally proposed in [14] using output inverter currents through inverse Clarke transformation.
proportional-integral (PI) as shown in Fig. 2. The VOC-PI Lastly, the reference stationary frame voltages (Vα∗ and Vβ∗ ) can
consists of outer and inner control loops. The outer loop be acquired directly from the two independent PR controllers
maintains the DC-link voltage (Vdc ) to its desired reference without inverse Park transformation. The PR controller transfer
level by adjusting the inverter output power. The reference function is expressed as follow:
d-axis current is also computed by the outer loop to control Ki
GPR = KP + (1)
the output active power while the amount of output reactive S + ω2
2
power is calculated using the reference q-axis current which where Kp is the proportional gain term, Ki is the integral gain
is usually set to zero for unity power factor operation. The term and ω is the resonant frequency. The resonant term pro-
three-phase output currents (Ia , Ib and Ic ) are transformed vides an infinite gain at the resonant frequency that minimizes
to the synchronous rotating frame (Id and Iq ) through park the steady-state error. Therefore, the steady-state current error
transformation. It can be seen that there are two separated PI can be minimized by having the resonant frequency matching
controllers used for obtaining the reference dq voltage signals with the grid frequency.
(Vd∗ and Vq∗ ) based on the Id and Iq errors respectively. Finally, Moreover, the ASVM can generate the gating switching
an inverse park transform generates the reference stationary signals directly from Vα∗ and Vβ∗ without any frame transforma-
frame voltages (Vα∗ and Vβ∗ ) from the reference dq voltage tions. Hence, the reduced of frame transformations decreases
signals and the grid voltage angle (θ ). Hence, the ASVM the computational complexity unlike the conventional VOC-
block uses the reference stationary frame voltages to generate PI method. In addition to that, the transformation errors
switching signals. are eliminated, thus enhancing the performance with better
Despite the facts that PI is easy for implementation, but reference tracking and faster dynamic response [15], [16].
there are some drawbacks such as the need of multiple frame
transformations and result high computational complexity, the B. Adaptive Space Vector Modulation
presence of steady-state error in the stationary frame as well The output voltage waveforms are synthesized using the
as the essential to decouple the phase dependency in the adaptive space vector modulation (ASVM) technique. The
three phase systems. These disadvantages affect the dynamic space vector representation for the NPC inverter is shown
response of the converter causing large transient inrush current in Fig. 4. It can be observed that there are several pairs of
and voltage across the DC-link. vectors (e.g. ”100” and ”211”) in each internal voltage state
In order to improve the dynamic performance and reduce which generate the same output voltage level. Conventionally,
the steady-state error of the controller, this paper proposes the classical SVM uses the pair of vectors during every
a proportional-resonant (PR) in the inner loop of the VOC switching cycle period. Therefore, an increase in the switching
 388
Vc1
Vc2
387

Capacitor Voltages (V)

386

385

384

6 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.1
Time (s)
Fig. 6: DC-link capacitor voltage in steady state condition
Fig. 4: Space vector representation of the NPC inverter. under VOC-PR.

IV. EVALUATION RESULTS

The proposed multi-string PV system with NPC grid-tied
inverter is co-simulated between Matlab/Simulink⃝ c
and PSIM
environment based on the detailed settings given in Table I.
Three parallel connected PV string modules (which consist of
Fig. 5: Circuit diagram and current path for vectors of one the PV string and the boost converter) are considered here to
vector pair. evaluate the system dynamic performance using the proposed
VOC-PR control scheme under various environmental condi-
loss is experienced with the classical SVM due to the high
tions. Hence, these three independent PV string modules are
switching frequency operation. Thus, the ASVM technique is
set with different solar irradiation and temperatures. The PV
implemented in conjunction with the proposed VOC-PR in this
panels are simulated using the SHARP NU-U235F1 model.
paper to improve the inverter efficiency. The overall switching
Each PV panel produces the maximum power of 235W (30V
loss is decreased by reducing the switching frequency since
and 7.84A) at 25∘ C and 1kW /m2 . Since the grid voltage is
one of the vector pairs is utilized in each switching cycle [17],
400Vl−l,rms , the nominal DC-link voltage can be calculated
[18]. This can be observed from the current flow based on the
according to (4) which is equal to 770Vdc , considering a
vector pair ”100” and ”211” as shown in Fig. 5.
normal modulation index of 0.85ma .
Even though both vectors generate the same output voltage
√
level, but there are different effects on the DC-link capacitor 3 Vdc
voltages. For instance, when the state vector is ”100”, the DC- Vl−l,rms = √ × ma × (4)
2 2
link capacitors C1 and C2 are in charging and discharging states
respectively, according to the voltage potentials. Hence, the In this case, the nominal input voltage of the boost converter
DC-link capacitor voltage balancing is achieved based on the is 600Vdc . Therefore, a total of 20 PV panels are connected in
state vector selection principle as described in (2) and (3). The series for each PV string.
vector selection principle is applicable for other vector pairs The result in Fig. 6 has verified the DC-link capacitor
as well. } voltage balancing performance based on the implementation
Vc1 ≤ Vc2 & Ia ≥ 0 of the ASVM technique together with the VOC-PR control
⇒ (100) (2)
Vc1 > Vc2 & Ia < 0 scheme. It is clearly observed that the DC-link capacitor
} voltages are balanced at around 385V which is half of the DC-
Vc1 ≥ Vc2 & Ia ≥ 0
⇒ (211) (3) link voltage (770Vdc ). Besides that, this result also concludes
Vc1 < Vc2 & Ia < 0
that the DC-link voltage is well-tracked to its reference.

TABLE II: DYNAMIC OPERATING CONDITIONS OF PV

TABLE I: SIMULATION PARAMETERS
STRING
Parameter Symbol Value
Time (s) String I String II String III
Grid Voltage Vab 400Vl−l,rms
Grid Frequency f 50Hz Irra=1∗ Irra=1 Irra=1
Line Inductor Lf 5mH 0 - 6.1 Temp=25∗ Temp=25 Temp=25
DC-link Capacitor C1 ,C2 2200μ F Irra=0 Irra=1.2 Irra=0.6
DC-link Voltage Vdc 770Vdc 6.1 - 6.26 Temp=25 Temp=25 Temp=25
NPC Switching Frequency fs,inv. 7.2kHz Irra=1 Irra=1.2 Irra=0.6
DC-DC Switching Frequency fs,boost. 10kHz 6.26 - 6.4 Temp=25 Temp=35 Temp=35
Boost Inductor L 1mH ∗ Irrad: Irradiance (kW /m2 ) and Temp: temperature (∘ C)
\Current (A)
20
Volt(V)

0
−20
(a)
Volt l−l (v)

500
0
−500
15
(b)
Pout (kW)

10

5
6.1 6.15 6.2 6.25 6.3 6.35 6.4
Time(s)
(c)
Fig. 7: Dynamic performance of PV grid connected inverter under various temperature and irradiance states: (a) grid currents
and phase voltage (scaled down by 10), (b) NPC line-line voltage and (c) inverter output power.

200 Steady state maximum current value

Current (A)

100
0
−100
−200
(a)
200 Steady state maximum current value
Current (A)

100
0
−100
−200

0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
Time (s)
(b)
Fig. 8: Three phase transient grid currents under (a) VOC-PI and (b) VOC-PR.

The dynamic performance of the proposed system is eval- DC-link voltage based on the magnitude of the output voltage
uated in Fig. 7 under the three different conditions listed waveform in Fig. 7(b). This is due to the sudden decreased in
in Table II. The proposed system is operated initially with the total extracted PV power at t=6.1s. As a result, the output
the three PV string modules having the same parameters power of the grid-tied NPC inverter is also decreased in Fig.
between t=0s to t=6.1s. During the second condition (from 7(c). During this period, the proposed VOC-PR controls the
t=6.1s onwards), different amount of irradiance is experienced output inverter power accordingly to the extracted PV power
by String I (complete shading Irrad = 0kW /m2 ), String II by reducing the amount of current injected to the grid. Despite
(increase in Irrad = 1.2kW /m2 ) and String III (partial shading of such extreme shading conditions, there are no voltage
Irrad = 0.6kW /m2 ). The irradiance in String I is changed back and current spikes experienced at the ac grid side with the
to its initial value while there is an increase in the temperature implementation of the proposed VOC-PR control scheme.
for String II and String III during t=6.26s to t=6.4s.
The performance of the conventional VOC-PI and proposed
The unity power factor operation is maintained throughout VOC-PR control algorithms are compared in Figs. 8 and 9. In
the different environmental conditions as shown in Fig. 7(a). Fig. 9, the DC-link voltage is rapidly tracked to its reference
Besides that, an output five-level line-line voltage waveform is level under the proposed VOC-PR control. On top of that, the
synthesized by the grid-tied NPC inverter in Fig. 7(b). Thus, maximum transient DC-link voltage is greatly reduced from
better power quality is achieved with the reduced THD profile 2000V (VOC-PI) to 1200V (VOC-PR). In addition to that, the
as compared to the 2L-VSI. three-phase transient grid current under the proposed VOC-
However, it can be observed that there is a decrease in the PR control scheme reach the steady-state condition with less
magnitude of the three-phase grid current in Fig. 7(a) and the than 0.1s in Fig. 8 (b) as compared to the performance under
Voltage (v)

2,000 switching frequency operation of the ASVM technique while

ensuring that the DC-link capacitor voltages are balanced.
1,000 These perceived advantages make the proposed VOC-PR
control scheme together with the ASVM technique becoming
more attractively for the large-scaled high power PV system.
2,000 (a)
Voltage(v)

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