A Novel Supervisory Control Algorithm to Improve the Performance of a Real-Time PV Power-Hardware-In-Loop Simulator with Non-RTDS

Abstract

A programmable direct current (DC) power supply with Real-time Digital Simulator (RTDS)-based photovoltaic (PV) Power Hardware-In-the-Loop (PHIL) simulators has been used to improve the control algorithm and reliability of a PV inverter. This paper proposes a supervisory control algorithm for a PV PHIL simulator with a non-RTDS device that is an alternative solution to a high-cost PHIL simulator. However, when such a simulator with the conventional algorithm which is used in an RTDS is connected to a PV inverter, the output is in the transient state and it makes it impossible to evaluate the performance of the PV inverter. Therefore, the proposed algorithm controls the voltage and current target values according to constant voltage (CV) and constant current (CC) modes to overcome the limitation of the Computing Unit and DC power supply, and it also uses a multi-rate system to account for the characteristics of each component of the simulator. A mathematical model of a PV system, programmable DC power supply, isolated DC measurement device, and Computing Unit are integrated to form a real-time processing simulator. Performance tests are carried out with a commercial PV inverter and prove the superiority of this proposed algorithm against the conventional algorithm.

Design and Experimental Implementation of a Hysteresis Algorithm to Optimize the Maximum Power Point Extracted from a Photovoltaic System

“…According to [12], these systems will soon become one of the main components of electrical power plants and smart grids. Many researchers are open to this topic, such as the development of new MPPT algorithms to PV system arrays operating under partial shading and exhibiting multiple local maximum power points [13,14], appropriate updating of the current grid coded [15,16], modeling and analysis of utility-scale photovoltaic units in hybrid energy storage devices [12], and so on [17][18][19]. Finally, the hybrid systems take advantage of the appropriate mixing combination between the grid-connected configuration and the stand-alone architecture.…”