This paper provides an insight on various random pulse width modulation techniques and their effect on spreading the harmonic spectrum for various applications like drives, hybrid electric vehicles and renewable energy sources, for two level as well as three level inverter. Acoustic noise reduction, electromagnetic interference conducted and torque ripple are obvious advantages of random pulse width modulation (PWM). PWM converters with multilevel topology can meet with global quality standards for power supplies. The random PWM technique provides additional advantages. Among others, it may be implemented to achieve switching loss equalization in power switches for cascaded H-Bridge multilevel inverters. This paper provides in depth understanding for different random PWM techniques and their applications.
The quality of power is always a concern for the high penetration of a grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) system due to the variation in solar irradiation and the temperature change of solar output, which in turn varies the fundamental component of power delivered to the grid. A solar source requires an inverter interface to supply the AC load as well as for the grid interconnection. Any reduction in the fundamental component generated by solar PV at a lower irradiation level or at hightemperature results in increasing %THD at the output of inverter for a given fixed switching frequency since harmonics due to PWM technique is comparable with the fundamental component. The selection of high-fixed-switching-frequency PWM reduces harmonics but increases the stress on switches and switching losses. It also suffers from issues of harmonics at carrier frequency and its sideband at multiples of switching frequency that causes acoustic noise and EMI. The random frequency PWM (Random PWM) method overcomes these issues presented by the fixed-frequency PWM method. However, a wide band of Random PWM makes the inverter filter design difficult and causes resonance in the distribution system. In addition, asymmetry in the carrier wave introduces even-order harmonics in the line current. Hence, this paper proposes a narrowband random frequency PWM method to reduce sideband harmonics, lower-order harmonics, even-order harmonics and a total harmonic distortion (THD) for a solar-based grid-connected inverter. Simulation results present a satisfactory performance of the proposed control technique for a steady-state and transient results. Experimental validation of the same is carried out on the OPAL-RT OP4500-based laboratory prototype of a 2-kVA inverter which depicts reduction in harmonics and hence improvement in power quality.
KeywordsGrid-connected inverter • Harmonics • Linear control • Random PWM • Solar inverter B Rajendrasinh Jadeja
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.