Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Electric inverters
- Creators: Heydt, Gerald
- Creators: Sarkar, Aratrik
Description
The high penetration of photovoltaic (PV) both at the utility and at the distribu-tion levels, has raised concerns about the reliability of grid-tied inverters of PV power systems. Inverters are generally considered as the weak link in PV power systems. The lack of a dedicated qualification/reliability standard for PV inverters is a main barrier in realizing higher level of confidence in reliability. Development of a well-accepted design qualification standard specifically for PV inverters will help pave the way for significant improvement in reliability and performance of inverters across the entire industry. The existing standards for PV inverters such as UL 1741 and IEC 62109-1 primarily focus on safety. IEC 62093 discusses inverter qualification but it includes all the balance of sys-tem components and therefore not specific to PV inverters. There are other general stan-dards for distributed generators including the IEEE1547 series of standards which cover major concerns like utility integration but they are not dedicated to PV inverters and are not written from a design qualification point of view. In this thesis, some of the potential requirements for a design qualification standard for PV inverters are addressed. The IEC 62093 is considered as a guideline and the possible inclusions in the framework for a dedicated design qualification standard of PV inverter are discussed. The missing links in existing PV inverter related standards are identified by performing gap analysis. Dif-ferent requirements of small residential inverters compared to large utility-scale systems, and the emerging requirements on grid support features are also considered. Electric stress test is found to be the key missing link and one of the electric stress tests, the surge withstand test is studied in detail. The use of the existing standards for surge withstand test of residential scale PV inverters is investigated and a method to suitably adopt these standards is proposed. The proposed method is studied analytically and verified using simulation. A design criterion for choosing the switch ratings of the inverter that can per-form reliably under the surge environment is derived.
ContributorsAlampoondi Venkataramanan, Sai Balasubramanian (Author) / Ayyanar, Raja (Thesis advisor) / Vittal, Vijay (Committee member) / Heydt, Gerald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation presents a novel current source converter topology that is primarily intended for single-phase photovoltaic (PV) applications. In comparison with the existing PV inverter technology, the salient features of the proposed topology are: a) the low frequency (double of line frequency) ripple that is common to single-phase inverters is greatly reduced; b) the absence of low frequency ripple enables significantly reduced size pass components to achieve necessary DC-link stiffness and c) improved maximum power point tracking (MPPT) performance is readily achieved due to the tightened current ripple even with reduced-size passive components. The proposed topology does not utilize any electrolytic capacitors. Instead an inductor is used as the DC-link filter and reliable AC film capacitors are utilized for the filter and auxiliary capacitor. The proposed topology has a life expectancy on par with PV panels. The proposed modulation technique can be used for any current source inverter where an unbalanced three-phase operation is desires such as active filters and power controllers. The proposed topology is ready for the next phase of microgrid and power system controllers in that it accepts reactive power commands. This work presents the proposed topology and its working principle supported by with numerical verifications and hardware results. Conclusions and future work are also presented.
ContributorsBush, Craig R (Author) / Ayyanar, Raja (Thesis advisor) / Karam, Lina (Committee member) / Heydt, Gerald (Committee member) / Karady, George G. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This thesis addresses the design and control of three phase inverters. Such inverters are
used to produce three-phase sinusoidal voltages and currents from a DC source. They
are critical for injecting power from renewable energy sources into the grid. This is
especially true since many of these sources of energy are DC sources (e.g. solar
photovoltaic) or need to be stored in DC batteries because they are intermittent (e.g. wind
and solar). Two classes of inverters are examined in this thesis. A control-centric design
procedure is presented for each class. The first class of inverters is simple in that they
consist of three decoupled subsystems. Such inverters are characterized by no mutual
inductance between the three phases. As such, no multivariable coupling is present and
decentralized single-input single-output (SISO) control theory suffices to generate
acceptable control designs. For this class of inverters several families of controllers are
addressed in order to examine command following as well as input disturbance and noise
attenuation specifications. The goal here is to illuminate fundamental tradeoffs. Such
tradeoffs include an improvement in the in-band command following and output
disturbance attenuation versus a deterioration in out-of-band noise attenuation.
A fundamental deficiency associated with such inverters is their large size. This can be
remedied by designing a smaller core. This naturally leads to the second class of inverters
considered in this work. These inverters are characterized by significant mutual
inductances and multivariable coupling. As such, SISO control theory is generally not
adequate and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) theory becomes essential for
controlling these inverters.
used to produce three-phase sinusoidal voltages and currents from a DC source. They
are critical for injecting power from renewable energy sources into the grid. This is
especially true since many of these sources of energy are DC sources (e.g. solar
photovoltaic) or need to be stored in DC batteries because they are intermittent (e.g. wind
and solar). Two classes of inverters are examined in this thesis. A control-centric design
procedure is presented for each class. The first class of inverters is simple in that they
consist of three decoupled subsystems. Such inverters are characterized by no mutual
inductance between the three phases. As such, no multivariable coupling is present and
decentralized single-input single-output (SISO) control theory suffices to generate
acceptable control designs. For this class of inverters several families of controllers are
addressed in order to examine command following as well as input disturbance and noise
attenuation specifications. The goal here is to illuminate fundamental tradeoffs. Such
tradeoffs include an improvement in the in-band command following and output
disturbance attenuation versus a deterioration in out-of-band noise attenuation.
A fundamental deficiency associated with such inverters is their large size. This can be
remedied by designing a smaller core. This naturally leads to the second class of inverters
considered in this work. These inverters are characterized by significant mutual
inductances and multivariable coupling. As such, SISO control theory is generally not
adequate and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) theory becomes essential for
controlling these inverters.
ContributorsSarkar, Aratrik (Author) / Rodriguez, Armando A. (Thesis advisor) / Si, Jennie (Committee member) / Tsakalis, Konstantinos (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015