Energy Production and Management in the 21st Century, Vol.

2 1297

Power-line communication between

parallel DC-DC optimizers on a
high voltage direct current bus
T. V. Nguyen, P. Petit, F. Maufay, M. Aillerie & J. P. Charles
Lorraine University, Metz, France

Abstract
This contribution presents one developed solution for parallel photovoltaic
energy generators based on a distributed architecture with individual DC-DC
converters, named optimizers, connected to an intermediary high voltage direct
current (HVDC) bus. This power bus also supports the communication between
optimizers and a central controller using the power-line communication (PLC)
approach. Then the optimizers are optimized for an interface output stage
assuming the PLC on the HVDC bus. This work, from the conception to the
realization of a prototype, concerns the analysis of the nature of the pertinent
information to the exchange between the converter and the central controller.
The information can include the I–V characteristics and the temperature of the
individual sources. The development of an electronic prototype that integrates
recently available components is made and the technological constraints at the
possible available frequency bandwidth are considered. The concrete realization
will be presented in fine.
Keywords: power-line communication (PLC), high voltage direct current
(HVDC), smart DC-DC converter, optimizer, renewable energy.

1 Introduction
The management and optimization of conversion and distribution of electrical
energy generated from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power is a
technology key-lock to improve the performance and the stability of the overall
energy transfer systems. The distributed architecture of energy sources
integrating smart grid concepts is a new approach allowing the individual
optimization of the production from each source. This approach requires the

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adjunction in the system of intra and inter-communication tools with a central

controller. One technical solution is PLC using the existing power-line
infrastructure for communication purposes. This new possibility of management
allows improving performance and stability in the overall energy transfer
process. Unfortunately, the majority of recent contributions have discussed PLC
for high data-rate applications like Internet access or multimedia communication
serving a relatively small number of users, and only few works concern PLC for
slow rate communication and high multipoint systems.
In recent years, some new energy power supply concepts have been
introduced. One of them newly introduced in renewable energy systems is the
smart grid concepts [1]. Moreover, nowadays power-engineering domain is
facing enormous challenges since the increasing interest in intermittent
renewable energies impose a completely new operation paradigm. The use of
these resources must be done in ways that guarantee a secure, autonomous,
sustainable, clean, and competitive operation. In a smart grid approach,
distributed energy resources are interconnected to be able to provide sufficient
and continuous energy. Dimensioning is done to provide energy as a significant
part of the consumption demand. Many of these sources and applications are of
DC type, and can be followed by a converter DC-ac stage. With the strong
incentives of green and free energy sources and advancement in storage
technology, power generation in a smart grid approach is not considered to be
connected only to a distribution grid with coal-fired or gas-fired power plants,
but can also constitute a stand alone installation for anyone who wishes to
produce its own electricity.

Nomenclature
C Capacitors (nF)
D1, D11 Schottky Diodes
HVDC High Voltage Direct Current
Ls, Lp1, Lp1 Inductors (mH)
M, M11 MOSFET switch
n1, n2, n3 Principal and secondary inductors (mH)
MPPT Maximum Power Point Tracker
MV Medium-voltage
PIC Peripheral Interface Controller
PWM Pulse Width Modulation
PLC Power-line Communication
R Resistors ()

Data transmission is also required in the proposed smart grid concept based
on HVDC distribution system from renewable sources. Data transmission is
needed for the required functionalities and applications that will be integrated
into the system, for example for parallel DC-DC converter monitoring with
power outage management and protection. For this purpose, PLC is a feasible
alternative.

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One possible response to these challenges can be the solution proposed in

Fig. 1. In this figure, we present a power supply system composed with various
sources such as solar cells with possible different technologies, wind turbines,
and compressed air energy storage (CAES) system or any other DC electric
sources interconnected by a high voltage DC bus; As a result of such solution is
a global generator implying a small wire section for the internal bus, and a global
relative low cost architecture [2, 3]. This solution implies that the sources deliver
energy through the HVDC bus via individual high step-up DC-DC optimizers. In
case of ac distribution, a central DC-ac inverter interfaces the HVDC bus to the
grid. Thus, the HVDC system is designed to replace both traditional medium-
voltage (MV) overhead line branches and low-voltage ac distribution by a high-
voltage DC distribution system. It is to be noted that, in this distributed
configuration, maximum power point trackers (MPPT) need to be integrated in
each individual converter. Additionally, as these MPPTs optimize the power
available from each individual source, the global efficiency of the system will be
higher than in case of a central architecture. Currently, in numerous industrial
domains, most of the distributed electricity generation and storage systems use
DC voltage and HVDC systems are intensively studied and developed for
changing the electric distribution from ac system to DC one. It is to be of note
that an additional advantage of DC voltage for smart grids is that no
synchronization is required for distributed generation.
In an AC production system integrating an intermediary HVDC bus, the
quality of the ac low-voltage at the output of the generator can be improved with
a customer inverter by the reduction of the number of branches of the MV grid
and a diminution of the length of the lines. The overhead lines can be replaced
by underground low-voltage cables. This directly results in a decrease of the
amount of faults generally occurring in MV grids. Thus, the quality and
reliability of the electricity distribution is improved, and the costs caused by
power outages reduced. The HVDC bus mainly defines the structure and
dimensions of the proposed communication architecture when the
communication is implemented with PLC. Thus, the structure and dimensions of
the HVDC bus, linked to a physical geographic area, bring challenges to PLC,
such as the reliability of the communication range, as for example, the
determination of the PLC repeater power inserted in the bus. In addition,
converters in the bus generate harmonics and interferences to the channel. These,
combined with challenges among the implemented functions in the grid, set the
boundary conditions and the minimum requirements for PLC.
Thus, we can summarize that the main objectives in developing distribution
systems and pursuing for smart grids are the cost efficiency and the reliability of
the electricity distribution. Ubiquitous communication plays a key role in smart
grids and the HVDC concept presents a novel approach to implement a smart
grid [4].
In this work, based on a set of requirements and measurements, PLC
architecture is proposed for HVDC systems. It uses a commercial PLC technique
and dedicated signal coupling method. The suitability of the proposed network
for HVDC system is assessed by its compliance with the requirements set for this

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Figure 1: Schematic of a parallel structure of high voltage DC bus with

PLC system on HVDC bus.

theoretical analysis and practical data transmission tests. We present a simple

hardware implementation of a distributed architecture based on smart DC-DC
optimizers integrating the power conversion and interface communication stages.
PLC-based network architecture for the HVDC bus system that meets all the
requirements presented above is described. It is to be noted that a self-power
supply stage can also be added in the optimizer, but only PLC developments will
be presented in this contribution; the main energy converter functions, with their
MPPT algorithms and the self-power stage are presented in other contributions
[5–8].
The PLC system is connected to power-lines of the HVDC bus using proper
interfacing circuits, which are used to provide electrical isolation and impedance
adaptation between the power DC-DC conversion part of the converter and the
power-line network. This means that the PLC systems can be considered as an

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additional part of each converter, without modification of its basic structure.

Nevertheless, theses two main stages are driven by a common Peripheral
Interface Controller (PIC) microcontroller assuming both the functions of tracker
and PLC master-slave controller. The system is suitable for data communications
within a local power network area, such as remote automatic meter reading, f re
and security alarm control. The system is built using digital modulation [9] to
reduce the complexity of the overall DC-DC converter-PLC controller. All these
simple concepts, mainly the two independent stages and a common control yield
to a great reduction in the cost of the overall system.

2 Communication requirements for PLC system on HVDC

bus for renewable energy generator
A distributed energy generator, associated with an energy transfer by
intermediate HVDC bus, integrating smart grid concept system contains
functionalities, such as smart metering, grid protection, control, and monitoring
implemented with communication between the parallel DC-DC optimizer and
the HVDC bus [10]. Different functions set different requirements for the
communications. Other functionalities, especially grid protection and
monitoring, include requirements for latency and jitter. Smart metering
applications, in turn, requires a for throughput potential, especially in medium
and small grids with many sources, where the total amount of transmitted data
can be up to kilobytes. Thus, broadband data rate (>1 kbps) is one of the
requirements. In addition, the number of functionalities will increase in the
future, such as, the control of distributed power production units and
management of energy storages. This has also to be taken into account when
considering the communication method or the selected protocol on the HVDC
bus. Other requirements for communication besides sufficient latency and data
rate are the reliability and range of the communication. Functions such as grid
protection is physically located and executed at the grid level. With PLC, the
medium already exists in the grid, and sufficient latency for the protection
application between the source and HVDC bus can be achieved. Obviously, this
must be verified by data transmission tests. The modulated signal is transmitted
to, or received from, the power-line by an interfacing circuit, which purpose is to
isolate the high voltage of the HVDC bus with the low voltage environment of
the PLC. This requirement is challenging in a renewable energy generator based
on multi sources or elements, considering that many network nodes are far from
the central node, and perhaps serves time-critical applications like those
mentioned further below.
Furthermore, while individual nodes communicate only small amounts of data
at a time, the total data volume to be transferred through the network is
substantial. Hence, resource-eff cient transport of data to and from the central
node is mandatory to achieve suff cient network coverage. In PLC networks the
communication channel may change abruptly during normal operation. For
example, switching operations in medium-voltage energy systems to balance the
power consumption by an individual load, storage element or over

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the distribution grid will result in changes of channel transfer functions in

sizeable parts of the PLC network. The PLC network design must be able to cope
with such abrupt changes, which means that the connectivity must be maintained
during or quickly recovered after these changes. In addition, severe network
disruptions, as example due to physical removal of network links in case of
energy source sensors maintenance or load changes are often not exceptional
events but do occur during normal operation in a distributed architecture. Thus a
PLC network needs to estimate the qualities of the connections. Indeed, to offer
the possibilities of a new adaption of the control system after connections after
changes of topology, ad-hoc networking features are needed. It is important to
note that the removal and addition of network nodes, or changes in the
impedance of the associated device affect the communication channels in a large
neighbourhood around this node. Evaluation of any communication technology
is only relevant in the context of the operating environment. This seemingly
obvious point, frequently bypassed in textbook analysis, cannot be overlooked in
the field of power-line communications [11]. The majority of engineering texts
heavily relies on the principle of superposition [12]. Unfortunately, the
conditions required for superposition to be applicable, i.e. linearity and time
invariance are not met for the majority of power-line networks. One cause of
nonlinearity is when a packet's signal voltage adds to the DC line voltage and
causes power supply electronic switching to turn on and off at the packet carrier
frequency. Another cause of possible confusions arises from the common view
that wiring capacitance dominates signal propagation effects. This simplified
view is rooted in assumptions, which do not accurately reflect power-wiring
environments. While it is true that wire capacitance is dominant for cases where
the termination or load impedance is much greater than the characteristic
impedance of the wire, power-lines are frequently loaded with impedances
significantly below the characteristic impedance of the wire. Common examples
of loads, which present low network impedance at communication frequencies,
include capacitors and inductor used within inverter and battery. The impedance
of these devices is typically an order of magnitude, or more, below the
characteristic impedance of power wiring.
Thus a standard communication system is built with two main parts, a
transmitter and a receiver, both parts can be considered as independent in the
conception. Such a system is shown in Fig. 2 for the practical case concerned by
the present study. The upper part of this block diagram, Fig. 2(a), is related to the
transmitter. In this part, a microcontroller insures the information generation and
synchronization. A modulator powered by the microcontroller modulates the
signal. The resulting signal is finally amplified before injection, via an
interfacing circuit, on the HVDC bus. The lower part of the block diagram,
Fig. 2(b), concerns the receiver that has to perform inverse operations than those
done by the transmitter. For that, just behind the interfacing circuit a
demodulator operates to transfer the demodulated information to the controller. It
is to be noted that the microcontroller can also assume the function of maximum
power point tracker in the energy production function of the generator.

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Figure 2: Block diagrams of (a) Transmitter and (b) Receiver of a PLC

system.

3 Design of a master-slave PLC system on HVDC bus for

renewable energy generator
Taking into account the previously presented study and the chosen approach for
renewable energy generator, we have developed a PLC system with two different
types of circuits for the transmitter-receiver: one, functioning in a slave mode
dedicated to the individual optimizers, a second one considered as the master,
being the interface with the central management controller. These circuits are
presented in Fig. 3 with upper and lower parts for the slave and master circuits,
respectively. In the chosen solution, the receiver parts of the slave and master
circuits are identical and only the transmitter circuits are different. For
experimental validation of the technological choices that we have done in the
present study, the HVDC bus voltage is specifically adjusted to 400 V, as
determined by the transformation ratio fixed in each individual DC-DC
converter. The PIC microcontroller, a PIC16F876 in our application, represented
in Fig. 3, is also used for the MPP tracking in the energy conversion part of the
step-up DC-DC converter. The PIC microcontroller creates a signal frequency
carrier for the controller switch MOSFET M as well as for M11 of the PLC
master-slaves circuits. The comparator converts data levels to the reference ones
to obtain the two digital levels 0V and 5V.
The main electronic component of the receivers of the PLC master and slave
circuits is a transistor mounted in a common emitter mode, which role is to adapt
the PLC signal from the HVDC bus to the microcontroller input, pin RA0 of the
PIC microcontroller. In this circuit, the received signal enters f rst to the
demodulator, which recovers the original data. An interfacing branch is used to
isolate the receivers from the 400 VDC environment. It is composed by R2, C2
(R22, C22) and combine with the filter circuit L3, C3 (L33, C33).

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Figure 3: (a) The PLC system master-slave and (b) implementation of

the microcontroller for transmitter and receiver parts of PLC
master and slave.

In the proposed PLC transmitter part of the slave circuit, the effect of
distortion is minimized, by a careful selection of a constant and stable carrier
frequency (fc). Therefore, an oscillator is built using the PIC microcontroller
generating modulating signal at a frequency of 50 kHz. The amplif cation of the
signal was designed using a BS170 transistor, dedicated for low-voltage and
high-speed applications, especially in inductive circuits. The interfacing circuit
consists of a forward-converter transformer where both primary and secondary
windings conducting simultaneously with opposing magneto-motive forces along
the mutual flux path. The difference of the magneto-motive forces is responsible
for maintaining the magnetizing flux in the core. When primary winding current
is interrupted by switching off the switch, the dotted ends of the windings
develop negative potential to oppose the interruption of current blocking the
diode, and thus, interrupting the conduction. To reduce the current delivered by
the HVDC bus in the secondary coil, thus avoiding possible saturation, we
added, Fig. 3(b), a self, Ls, and a capacitor, C1, in the interfacing circuit of PLC

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system slave. Each PLC slave circuit connected on the HVDC power-line
corresponds to a node. The current passing through the PLC transmitter part of
the slave circuit is equal the output current of DC-DC converter. The purpose of
the Ls coil, Fig. 3(b), is to limit the saturation current in the circuit magnetic of
Lp1 - Lp2 transformer. Thus this work design is the same as a forward-converter
transformer on the HVDC bus. The current coming from all source-nodes of the
HVDC bus crosses the PLC transmitter part of the master circuit. Dimensions of
the magnetic circuit in the transformer shown in Fig. 3(b) for the transmitter part
are reduced by a combined solution with the resistor of the HVDC line. In
addition, to reduce the magnetic-filter circuit, we have chosen a solution
integrating two dedicated circuits represented as cir-1 and cir-2 (not detailed in
this contribution) in Fig. 3(a). The circuit cir-1 is composed with a switch and a
filter. The circuit cir-2 is based on a comparator circuit assuming the comparison
between the feedback current provided from the HVDC bus and a fixed but
adjustable threshold value. The output of cir-2 is a voltage proportional to the
difference between these two input signals, with its output connected to the
microcontroller input RA1.
We present the shape of the various PLC signals occurring in the system:
Fig. 4 shows the output simulated information signal as generated by the
microcontroller via the transmitter and Fig. 5 shows the PLC signal on the
HVDC bus as recorded at the receiver input.
The proposed solution was tested for the validation of the technological
choices. The simulation of the optimizers with the PLC circuits was done under
Orcad-Proteus environment. The interfacing circuit was tested using three
different types of signals: sinusoidal, triangular and rectangular signals to assess
the attenuation, distortion and noise performances of the circuit. All signals
suffer from high attenuation levels, and among the possible choices, sinusoidal
and triangular signals were not used because of the best synchronization
possibilities offered by a rectangular waveform in a low signal over noise ratio
environment.
The interfacing circuit was tested for information at 50kHz and for a
modulation signal at 500Hz as shown in Fig. 4 with amplitude of 5V. This signal
is generated at the pin RC2 of the microcontroller using the Pulse Width
Modulation (PWM) method. These choices were done, allowing the use of a
band-pass filter at 500 Hz to limit the influence of high frequency noise as those
generated by AM broadcast.
The simulation was performed and the results recorded in three points of
the circuit as shown in Figs. 5.
In Fig. 5(a) we can see the signal recorded at a power-line HVDC node. The
PLC information signal presents a rectangular shape with amplitude of +/-5V
superimposed on the 400 V of the power HVDC bus. Fig. 5(b) presents the
signal at the entry of the receiver part of the slave circuit (see Fig. 3). The
frequency on the HVDC power-line is the same as the entering signal, measured
at the R2 resistor pins, due to various attenuations, this signal presents a
sinusoidal waveform, integrated by the interfacing circuit of the receiver (this

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function is assumed by R2 and C2). Finally, Fig. 5(c) shows the demodulated
output signal (Fig. 5(b)) measured at pin RA0 of the controller.

Figure 4: Microcontroller output signal of the MOSFET controller in the

PLC slave.

Figure 5: PLC signals (a) on HVDC bus; (b) input of the modulation of
receiver; (c) output of demodulation of receiver.

This simulation, based on the specific technology choices done in the present
development shows the feasibility of PLC system on HVDC bus for
communication of parallel DC-DC optimizers with a central controller in
distributed renewable energy production architecture. Especially, the signal
shapes presented in Figs 5 show the small influence of the PLC signal on the
HVDC bus and the possibility for the PLC circuit to efficiently interface the
communication of the optimizer on the bus, with an information signal emitted
and transmitted after modulation and finally, correctly detected after
demodulation.

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4 Conclusion
Initially, this paper has presented how the numerous advantages of the PLC
system are developed and associated to a power bus using high DC voltage
allowing an improvement of performances and stability of the overall energy
transfer process in a renewable energy system. Taking into account these
considerations we have designed a simple and reliable PLC master-slave system
for DC-DC converters connected to HVDC bus. The system achieves the
requirements of stability, reliability, and accuracy. At second, we have simulated
the system in continuous operation mode, demonstrating that in the retained
solution, the transmitted signal suffered from very low noise levels and
distortion. In the framework of smart grid concept, the proposed architecture can
be successfully implemented with shelf components to assume low data rate PLC
on the HVDC bus allowing applications such as power and remote control,
which are necessary in a parallel distributed renewable energy generator system.

Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Yves Gillet, Head of the Industrial
Engineering and Maintenance Department of the University Institute of
Technology, IUT of Thionville-Yutz (France) for financial support and all
facilities offered for the present research.

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