Int. J. Process Systems Engineering, Vol. 3, Nos.

1/2/3, 2015

Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV

voltage regulation
Antonio Valderrabano-Gonzalez*
Universidad Panamericana Campus Guadalajara,
Prol. Calzada Circunvalacin Pte. No. 49,
Col. Ciudad Granja. Zapopan, Jal., 45010, Mxico
Fax: +52-33-1368-2201
Email: avalder@up.edu.mx
*Corresponding author

Francisco Beltran-Carbajal
Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana,
Unidad Azcapotzalco, Departamento de Energa,
Av. San Pablo No. 180, Col. Reynosa Tamaulipas,
C.P. 02200 Mxico, D.F., Mxico
Email: fbeltran@azc.uam.mx

Ruben Tapia-Olvera
Universidad Politcnica de Tulancingo,
Ingenieras No. 100, Huapalcalco,
Hgo., 43629, Mxico
Email: rtapia@upt.edu.mx

Julio Cesar Rosas-Caro

Universidad Panamericana Campus Guadalajara,
Prol. Calzada Circunvalacin Pte. No. 49,
Col. Ciudad Granja. Zapopan, Jal., 45010, Mxico
Email: crosas@up.edu.mx

Hossam A. Gabbar
University of Ontario Institute of Technology,
UOIT, 2000 Simcoe Street North Oshawa,
ON L1H 7K4, Canada
Email: hossam.gaber@uoit.ca

Copyright 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

A. Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al.

Adel M. Sharaf
Sharaf Energy Systems, Inc.,
147 Berkley Drive, Fredericton E3C 2P2,
New Brunswick, Canada
Email: profdramsharaf@yahoo.ca
Abstract: This paper illustrates a way to verify optimised angles for five and
seven level single-phase inverters. The ability to follow strict angles for
switching times is due to a simple synchronising scheme used along with the
arctangent method. Power stage is focused to attain the lowest number of
switches and DC sources, and can be used in a cascade multilevel strategy.
Comparison of harmonic contents and total harmonic distortion is presented for
several optimisation strategies carried out on the literature, and a compensation
scheme for regulation with two degree of freedom that brings the inverter to
have 11 or 15 level and be within the standard is proposed.
Keywords: facts; inverter; optimisation power quality; total harmonic
distortion; THD.
Reference
to
this
paper
should
be
made
as
follows:
Valderrabano-Gonzalez, A., Beltran-Carbajal, F., Tapia-Olvera, R.,
Rosas-Caro, J.C., Gabbar, H.A. and Sharaf, A.M. (2015) Single phase low
THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation, Int. J. Process Systems
Engineering, Vol. 3, Nos. 1/2/3, pp.319.
Biographical notes: Antonio Valderrabano-Gonzalez received his BS in
Industrial Electronics from the Instituto Tecnolgico de Puebla (Mxico), his
MSc in Electronics from the Instituto Nacional de Astrofsica, ptica y
Electrnica (Mxico), and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Cinvestav
Guadalajara (Mxico) in 2010. He is working as a Professor at Universidad
Panamericana Campus Guadalajara Mxico. His research interests are power
electronics, control of power electronic converters, FACTS devices, and power
quality.
Francisco Beltran-Carbajal received his BS in Electromechanical Engineering
from the Instituto Tecnolgico de Zacatepec (Mxico) and his PhD in Electrical
Engineering (Mechatronics) from the Centro de Investigacin y Estudios
Avanzados del Instituto Politcnico Nacional (CINVESTAV-IPN) in Mexico
City. He is currently Titular Professor in the Energy Department in the
Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana (UAM), Unidad Azcapotzalco in Mexico
City. His main research interests are vibration control, rotating machinery,
mechatronics, and automatic control of electromechanical and electronic
systems.
Rubn Tapia-Olvera obtained his BS in Electrical Engineering from Instituto
Tecnolgico de Pachuca, Mxico in 1999, his MSc and PhD in Electrical
Engineering from CINVESTAV Guadalajara, Mxico in 2002 and 2006,
respectively. He is currently a Professor at Universidad Politcnica de
Tulancingo. His primary area of interest is in modeling and control of FACTS
devices with computational intelligence techniques, including its operation in
electrical power systems.

Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation

Julio Cesar Rosas-Caro received his BS in Electronics and his MS in Sciences

in Electrical Engineering from the Madero City Institute of Technology,
Mexico, in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and his PhD in Sciences in Electrical
Engineering from the Guadalajara campus of CINVESTAV, Mexico in 2009.
He is currently with the Universidad Panamericana Campus Guadalajara,
Mexico. He has been a visiting scholar at Michigan State University in 2007
and at the University of Colorado at Denver in 2012 and 2014. His research
interest is power electronics including dc-dc converters, FACTS devices and
power converter topologies.
Hossam A.Gabbar is a Professor in the Faculty of Energy Systems and Nuclear
Science, and cross appointed in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied
Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). He obtained his
PhD from Okayama University (Japan), while his undergrad degree (BSc, with
First Class of Honor) is in the area of automatic control from Alexandria
University, Egypt. He is specialised in smart energy grid engineering with
focus on safety and control systems. He worked in energy process control in
national and international research and industrial projects in Japan, UAE,
Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, and Canada.
Adel M. Sharaf received his BSc in Electrical Engineering from Cairo
University, Cairo, Egypt (Electric Power Systems and Machines Section), his
MSc, and PhD in Electrical Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg,
MB, Canada. He is the President of Sharaf Energy Systems, and Intelligent
Environmental Energy Systems, Inc. His research areas include electric utility
planning and operation, power quality-PQ, sustainable green power-renewable
energy, FACTS technology, power electronics, energy conservation, power
system control, protection, security and stability and sustainable green power
NUG-generation. He has authored and co-authored over 820 scholarly technical
journals, conference papers and engineering reports, and four book chapters.

Introduction

Solar panels generate the most electricity on clear days with abundant sunshine, and they
have a maximum power rating, which is the measurement of how much power the
panels produce under ideal conditions. That is calculated in labs by using the equivalent
light of a sunny day, at noon, at the equator; however, the solar panel should be able to be
located at residential roofs, where the amount of sunlight varies throughout the day, and
throughout the year, and the weather conditions can be very different of the lab. Typical
solar panels can produce 1025% of their rated capacity in a foggy day, but the exact
amount will vary depending upon the density of the clouds, the type of solar panel, etc.,
but even with a standard solar panel on a cloudy day, you will be able to generate some
power when its daylight. Utility-interconnected photovoltaic (PV) systems are not used
normally for voltage regulation. Therefore, the voltage operating ranges for PV inverters
are selected as a protection function that responds to abnormal utility conditions, not as a
voltage regulation function. For residential applications, the PV systems should be
capable of operating within the limits normally experienced on utility distribution lines.
The operating window for these small PV systems is 106132 V on a 120 V base, that is,
88110% of nominal voltage. This range results in trip points at 105 V and at 133 V.
(ANSI/IEEE Std 929-1988, 1987). A great deal of research has been made for procuring

A. Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al.

a maximum power point tracking on the PV panels for three phase and single phase
systems, but a high restriction to solve for spreading its use is the total harmonic
distortion (THD). There have been many works trying to establish the limits on the THD;
the description of the maximum allowable values for harmonic distortion for single phase
inverters is provided in Ward and Ward (2002), but a long discussion for low voltage
systems was presented in IEEE P519.1/D12 (2012), giving the result of a maximum THD
of 8%, with maximum individual harmonic of 5%, but according to IEEE P519.1/D12
(2012), residential loads are indeed harmonic producers whose limits are not covered
IEEE STD 519 (IEEE Std 519-2014, 2014), the harmonic voltage levels will be a
function of the harmonics on the overall distribution system, and the combined effect of
harmonic currents injected from each of the residences supplied from a common
distribution transformer. It results obvious that whenever there is a confusion on the
parameters the strongest requirement should be followed in order to fulfil all the others;
that is the reason for a lot of work in micro inverters and middle power inverters to have
low THD. Several studies point to the use of cascaded H-Bridge and look for an
optimisation on the firing angle of the switches. On this context, Ismail et al. (2014) bring
a selective harmonic elimination method for five-level inverter using particle swarm
optimisation, while Mansoor et al. (2008), illustrate the modelling for a five-level inverter
and optimised angles using Newton-Rapson approximation, and Diong et al. (2013) bring
a frequency-weighted THD of the staircase-modulated output voltage of single-phase
multilevel inverters, with or without elimination of the lowest order harmonic. Seven
level inverters have also gained popularity due to their ability to be combined with a
12 pulses, resulting in an 84 pulses configuration (Valderrbano-Gonzlez et al., 2012;
Valderrabano and Ramirez, 2010a, 2010b), the spice model for a seven level inverter and
optimised angles using Newton-Raphson approximation is presented in Iero et al. (2014),
while the obtaining of optimised angles for it, using SHE-OHESW equations is offered
in Krismadinata et al. (2013). The addition of one more degree of freedom in the
optimisation for harmonic minimisation is introduced in Jiang and Lipo (2000), and the
optimised switching angles for an 11 level inverter using SHE method are granted in
Kumar et al. (2010). Voltage harmonic distortion limits in low-voltage networks. New
topologies arise to drop down the amount of switches on single-phase inverters. The
cascaded seven level inverter with capacitors for splitting the voltage using the charging
or discharging time of the capacitors as part of the optimising method for obtaining the
firing angles of the switches is illustrated in Zhong et al. (2009), and the use of two
bidirectional switches and a H-bridge for seven level generation in Rahim et al. (2010).
Very important is to connect these inverters to the grid for islanding and non-islanding
loads, and strong efforts have been made to track the single-phase signal as presented in
da Silva et al. (2011, 2008), Crowhurst et al. (2010), Tan Kheng and Masri (2010),
Qi et al. (2010), Ciobotaru et al. (2006), Dong et al. (2011) and Zhibing et al. (2010), and
three-phase arctangent method has been validated in Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al. (2013)
to have a saw tooth on the limits 0 2 and use standard pulse width modulation
technique for gating the switches. This paper presents an alternate solution that employs a
simple RC array to generate quadrature signals for a 60 Hz single phase grid, and exploit
the arctangent method to track the angle. Our proposal brings the idea of using a single
PV panel connected in series for regulation of the voltage using bilinear relationship for
the firing angles. The opportunities to connect this inverter and lower the THD are
evident when we evaluate the gating signals at angles that provide an optimised signal.
Simulations are included to verify the viability of the proposal.

Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation

Quadrature signal generation

Figure 1 illustrates the circuit used for generating the quadrature signals used on the
synchronising scheme. Here a VPP10250 transformer is used to monitor a 127 V/60 Hz
23
, so we have 11.043 V peak on the
grid. This transformer has a turn ratio of 115 :
2
secondary winding. This sinusoidal signal is used to feed an RC circuit with impedances
of 2,652.58, and j2,652.58, which lead to values C = 1e-6 and R = 2,652.58. The
current on this circuit will generate two voltage signals in quadrature: VR = 7.80845;
VC = 7.80845, and we can associate the voltage on the capacitor to Alpha (), and the
voltage on the resistor to Beta (). It is important to notice that these two signals are
lagged 45 from the stationary reference frame. These two signals are passed through an
INA159 with REF2930 to be multiplied by 1/5 and added an offset of 1.5 V, in order to
be fed to a microcontroller or DSP.
Figure 1

Circuit for quadrature signal generation

Synchronising signal

By using the signals Alpha () and Beta (), defined previously, we can apply the
strategy presented in equation (1), to obtain the tracking of the signal Alpha (), which is
denoted as t and depicted on Figure 2. The model for obtaining this t signal is
presented in Figure 3.

t = 2 tan 1
2
2

+
2

(1)

A. Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al.

Figure 2

Synchronising signal along with alpha, beta, and transformer output

Figure 3

Single-phase synchronising strategy model

2
ALPHA
1
BETA

MATLAB
Function
sqrt(alpha *alpha +beta *beta )

atan
Divide

Trigonometric
Function 2

-1
Kp1

2
Kp2

1
wt

pi/2

The use of this synchronising scheme allows a very precise pulse width modulation angle
control for gating signals, using t as the carrier signal. The first step is to convert the
signal t to degrees and then lead it 45 for compensation of the quadrature circuit as
presented in (2).
180

+ 45 mod (360)
angle = t *

(2)

Power electronics stage

A big number of configurations has been studied in order to connect PV-panels to grid,
and obtain the lowest THD possible. Most of these configurations use the cascaded
single-phase bridge due to its modularity as illustrated on Figure 4(a). Five and seven
levels are the most popular in order to apply optimisation techniques, and they are
dependent of two values of single DC sources used for providing the inverted AC signal

Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation

as schematised on Figure 4(b). These DC sources should have independent references in

order to apply the standard cascaded gating techniques. If these two values are equal, the
resultant signal will have five levels, on the other hand, if one is twice the amplitude
of the other, the resultant signal will have seven levels. This means we need
eight switches and two different VDC sources in order to have five or seven levels of
voltage on the output. The strategy followed on this proposal uses a single-phase
bridge connected to a bidirectional switch (Shalchi Alishah et al., 2014) to obtain a
five-level inverter as presented in Figure 5, so the amount of switches is reduced to five.
The switching combination needed to produce the five-level output is presented in
Table 1. This structure uses two VDC sources that are connected with a neutral
point joined to the bidirectional switch. In order to get these two DC sources, several
strategies using capacitors for splitting (Zhong et al., 2009), multilevel boosting
(Rosas-Caro et al., 2010), or simply by a series connection of renewable sources
with a central tap has been used. On this paper, and due to this inverter will be used
for active power sent to the grid, a traditional continuous conduction mode buck
converter for half of the input voltage is used, obeying to the equations presented in
(3), (4), and (5).
V0 = VS k

(3)

I 0 =

VS
k (1 k )
Lf

(4)

V0 =

VS (1 k )k
8 LCf 2

(5)

On these equations, Vs is the input of the buck converter, V0 the output voltage, k the duty
cycle, f the switching frequency, V0 and I0 the maximum allowed variations in output
voltage and output current respectively, and L and C the values of the inductance and
capacitance. With this array, we can either use a PV string voltage, a battery bank, or the
resulting voltage of a boost converter to have the duty cycle of the boost as one degree
of freedom for controlling the amplitude of the converter output, and obeying to
equations (6), (7), and (8). The strategy followed on this paper uses a boost converter to
ensure the input to the buck is of the same values for different luminance values on the
PV string. The resulting converter is presented on Figure 6.
V0 =

VS
1 k

(6)

I 0 =

VS
k
Lf

(7)

V0 =

VS k
(1 k ) fRC

(8)

10

A. Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al.

Figure 4

(a) Cascaded inverter circuit (b) Five and seven level configuration (see online version
for colours)

Figure 5

Five level inverted structure followed on this strategy (see online version for colours)

Table 1

Swiching combination for five level output

s1

s2

s3

s4

s5

Output

2 VDC

VDC

VDC

2 VDC

Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation

Figure 6

Table 2
Reference

11

Boost and buck converters used to split the PV string voltage for five level inverter

Optimised five and seven level switching angles

Author

Technique

Number of
levels

THD

Ismail et al

PSO

31.8

70.88

37.76

Mansoor et al

Newton-Raphson

16.23 51.56

18.9

Diong et al

WTHD

13.4

41.9

16.44

11

Iero et al

Newton-Raphson

11.7

26.9

56.06 12.53

12

Krismandinata et al

SHE-OHESW

9.06

28.52 55.05 11.92

13

Jiang et al

+1 degree of
freedom

7.94

25.04 42.47 12.91

Equispaced

14.28

Figure 7

Five level output comparison in (a) shape and (b) harmonic content

(a)

40

65.7

16.82

12
Figure 7

A. Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al.
Five level output comparison in (a) shape and (b) harmonic content (continued)

(b)
Figure 8

Seven level output comparison in (a) shape and (b) harmonic content

(a)

Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation

Figure 8

Seven level output comparison in (a) shape and (b) harmonic content (continued)

(b)
Figure 9

(a) Eleven level output and (b) harmonic content (see online version for colours)

(a)

13

14
Figure 9

A. Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al.
(a) Eleven level output and (b) harmonic content (continued) (see online version
for colours)

(b)
Figure 10 (a) Fifteen level output and (b) harmonic content (see online version for colours)

(a)

Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation

15

Figure 10 (a) Fifteen level output and (b) harmonic content (continued) (see online version
for colours)

(b)

Gating optimisation

Once the problem of synchronisation is solved, and the power electronics configuration is
defined, the following stage is to set a gating scheme that produces the lowest
THD on the inverter output. Optimised angles for the lowest THD for five and seven
levels are provided on Table 2, using 1, 2, and 3 as the starting point for level
change. The output is presented in Figure 7(a) for five levels. Important is to verify that
regardless the technique used for power stage on these converters, the THD gotten using
Piece-wise Linear Electrical Circuit Simulation for Simulink (PLECS), and 100
harmonics is out of the IEEE standard 519. The ability of using precise firing angles is
due to the synchronising scheme followed on this strategy. The 50 initial harmonic values
are illustrated in Figure 7(b) for five levels. Most traditional seven level inverters
commuted at fundamental frequency use an strategy of equal duration of the levels,
which brings a THD of 16.82%, but again, with a precise system to synchronise the
firing signals it is possible to get a lower THD. The corresponding values for seven level
output, along with the harmonic output are shown in Figure 8(a), and Figure 8(b)
respectively.

16

A. Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al.

PV panel compensation

Compensation for obtaining a higher number of levels and consequently, lower THD is
made by using a series connection of a PV panel feeding a standard single phase bridge
inverter. The PV model used is according to Schnberger (2013). Starting with values for
luminance of one sun, and using PV strings for a 127VRMS grid, we should divide the
maximum amplitude in five for using the five-level inverter proposed in cascade with a
three-level inverter. This means V_low, and V_high on Figure 5 should have same
values, as presented in (9), while the compensation voltage has to accomplish the
amplitude expected for the total, as presented in (10). On this way, the maximum
amplitude gotten by adding these three DC sources (V_low + V_high + V_comp) will be
A = 127 2, as expected for the single phase grid.
V_low = V_high =
V_comp =

2
(127 2
5

1
(127 2
5

(9)
(10)

The switching strategy for V_comp is generated via trapezoidal rule for the angle of level
change, producing a voltage output of 11 levels, as presented in Figure 9, with a THD of
7.93%, which is now within IEEE Std 5192014 for residential applications. In order to
complete this study, a PV string with the same characteristics is added to a seven level
inverter using trapezoidal rule for the changing angles. The voltage levels needed for a
127VRMS grid are presented in (11), (12), and (13). Adding these three DC sources the
maximum obtained will be A = 127 2, as on the previous array but with 15 level on the
output, bringing the THD to 6.97%, as illustrated in Figure 10.
V_low =

2
(127 2 )
7

V_high =

4
(127 2 )
7

V_comp =

1
(127 2 )
7

(11)
(12)

(13)

With the conditions of DC voltage needed for producing the amplitude and THD pursued,
we can validate the results for partial events with 1 sun and 0.1 sun. For this study, we are
considering the two PV-strings with the same sun, but having the arrays presented, we
can use a boost converter to ensure the voltage levels obtaining two degree of freedom.
This verification and the optimisation of these controllers for two degree of freedom are
subject to further research, but using the difference between the reference voltage and the
summation of the voltage of the main inverter, and the one gotten on the compensation
the duty cycle of the boost can be linked obtaining the same amplitude and a THD of
7.05% for the 15 level array, which is still within standard, as presented in Figure 11.

Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation

17

Figure 11 Fifteen level output with 1.0 and 0.1 sun

Conclusions

This paper has introduced the idea of phasor relationships for the generation of two
quadrature signals utilised for the arctangent method for synchronisation of single phase
inverters. The difference on the zero of the grid signal and zero on the synchronising
scheme is compensated via software. Having a precise angle tracking is easy to verify
optimised angles presented on the literature and obtained with several strategies. The
lowest THD obtained for five and seven levels is out of IEEE Std. 519-2014, so it is
needed to introduce an extra module to drop this THD and be able to regulate voltage
output. Having two strings for producing the needed voltage amplitude allow the
possibility of having two degree of freedom for obtaining the best performance. In this
work, the combination of voltage values allows to have amplitude for voltage regulation
even with values of 0.1 sun of radiance. Combination of different strategies on a cascaded
structure brings the possibility of having a reduced number of switches and low blocked
voltage on them. The simulation results demonstrate the viability of the proposal for
residential applications in islanding and non-islanding inverters.

Acknowledgements
This paper was supported by Universidad Panamericana under grant Fomento a la
Investigacin UP 2013, project, Inversor va punto neutro.

18

A. Valderrabano-Gonzalez et al.

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