Adaptive harmonic compensation for
Grid connected PV system
Thasneem. A
P.G.Scholar
Dept of EEE
MCET, Thiruvananthapuram
Kerala, India
thasnu786@gmail.com
Abstract— Renewable energy resources are gaining more
importance in these days. Photovoltaics, Wind energy are the
most promising solution for the energy crisis that we are facing
today. This paper presents modelling, controller design, and
simulation study of a gridconnected PV system.The non-ideal
factors in the system contribute significant amount of lower
order harmonics.An adaptive harmonic compensation technique
is used for the lower order harmonic compensation. Inaddition,
the performances of Proportional-Resonant (PR) and
proportional-resonant-integral (PRI) controller is analysed along
with adaptive filter. The whole system is modelled in
Matlab/Simulink environment. Simulation results are presented
to show the overall system performance.
Index Terms — Adaptive filters, PRI controller, grid
connected PV system , MPPT method
I. INTRODUCTION
Grid connected single phase photovoltaic systems are
nowadays recognised for their contribution to clean power
generation. This property has led to worldwide government
policies aimed at increasing the deployment of Grid-connected
PV systems that are connected withutility power networks. PV
systems are usually deployed in a highly dispersed mode, in
the lowest voltage portions of the grid (down to residential
end-use voltages. A well-verified computer model would be of
great help in this task.
The topology of the solar inverter system is simple. It
consists of the following three power circuit stages:
1) Boost converter stage to perform maximum power
point tracking (MPPT);
2) A low-voltage single-phase inverter;
3) A filter and a step-up transformer for interfacing
with the grid.
Ideally, this topology will not inject any lower order
harmonics into the grid due to high-frequency pulse width
modulation operation[1]. However, the non-ideal factors in the
system such as core saturation-induced distorted magnetizing
current of the transformer and the dead time of the inverter,
etc., contribute to a significant amount of lower order
harmonics in the grid current. A novel design of inverter
current control that mitigates lower order harmonics is
presented in this paper.
MOHANDAS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY-COMPENDIUM OF ABSTRACTS 2014-15
Mahesh M.
Asst. Professor
Dept of EEE
MCET, Thiruvananthapuram
Kerala, India
maheshmatu@gmail.com
II. BASE SYSTEM DESIGN
Fig.1.Complete base system
The topology shown in Fig.1 will be a good choice for low-
rated PV inverters of rating less than a kilowatt. The
disadvantage would be the relatively larger size of the
interface transformer compared to topologies with a high-
frequency link transformer[2]. There can be a dc injection into
the transformer primary due to a number of factors. These can
be the varying power reference from a fast MPPT block from
which the ac current reference is generated, the offsets in the
sensors, and A/D conversion block in the digital controller.
This dc injection would result in even harmonics being drawn
from the grid, again contributing to a lower power quality.
Here an adaptive filter and PRI controller is used for the
harmonic mitigation. The advantage of the adaptive filter-
based method is the inherent frequency adaptability which
would result in same amount of harmonic compensation even
when there are shifts in grid frequency. The implementation of
adaptive filters is simple. This method estimates a particular
harmonic in the grid current using a least-mean-square (LMS)
adaptive filter and generates a harmonic voltage reference
using a proportional controller. This voltage reference is added
with appropriate polarity to the fundamental voltage reference
to attenuate that particular harmonic.[3-5]
The organization of this paper is as follows: Section III
discussesthe designing of PV panel and MPPT. In section IV
the fundamental current control using a PRI controller is
discussed.In Section V, the concept of adaptive harmonic
compensation isexplained. In Section VI, simulation studies
and results are given. Comparison of performances of
controller is also carried out in this paper. Conclusions are Fig.2 shows the flowchart for INC algorithm. Comparison
given in Section VII. can be done by using Matlab modelling of the entire PV
system.
III. PV PANEL DESIGNING AND MPPT

PV module represents the fundamental power conversion

unit of a PV generator system. The output characteristics of
PV module depends on the solar insolation, the cell
temperature and output voltage of PV module. Since PV
module has nonlinear characteristics, it is necessary to model
it for the design and simulation of PV system applications
[6].Here LPC SM 250 is selected for the PV panel designing.
Datasheet for the same is given below.

TABLE I
DATASHEET FOR LPC SM 250

Fig.3. Flow chart for INC algorithm

IV. FUNDAMENTAL CURRENT CONTROL

In this paper fundamental current control is done by
Proportional- Resonant and Proportional Resonant Integral
controller.The complete system is shown in the following
Since the solar cell has non linear characteristics,
block diagram.
Maximum Power point tracking Algorithms (MPPT) are
necessary to track the operating point where the power is
maximum[7]. The problem considered by MPPT techniques
is to automatically find the voltage Vm and current Im at
which a PV array should operate to obtain the maximum
power output,Pmunder a given temperature and irradiance. It
is possible to have multiplelocal maxima under partial
shadingconditions,but overall here is only one true MPP.
Thereare large numbersof methods for MPPT. Here INC
method is used to track MPP.
The incremental conductance method is based on the fact
that the slope of the PV arraypowercurveis zero at the MPP.
At the left of MPP,the slope of the PV array power curve is
positive and the slope becomes negative at the right of
MPP[8].

𝑑𝑃
= 0 𝑎𝑡 𝑀𝑃𝑃 (1)
𝑑𝑉
𝑑𝑃
> 0, 𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑓𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑃𝑃 (2)
𝑑𝑉 Fig.3. Block diagram of complete system
𝑑𝑃
< 0, 𝑎𝑡 𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑕𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑃𝑃 (3) Conventional PR controller cannot compensate the DC
𝑑𝑉 offset which cause even harmonics. So as a modification PRI
controller is used for the fundamental current control.
𝑑𝑃 𝑑(𝐼 ∗ 𝑉) ∆𝐼
= =𝐼+𝑉 (4)
𝑑𝑉 𝑑𝑉 ∆𝑉

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 Fig 6. Generation of voltage reference from estimated kth harmonic
componentof current using the LMS adaptive filter.

The adaptiveblock takes in two inputs sin( kωot) and cos(kωot)

Fig.4.Block diagram of the fundamental current controlwith the PRI
controller
The integral portion is used to ensure that there will not beany
steady-state dc in the system. Reference current is obtained
from varying power reference given by MPPT.
from a PLL.These samples are multiplied by the weights Wcos
and Wsin.The output is subtracted from the sensed grid current
sample,which is taken as the error for the LMS algorithm. The
weightsare then updated as per the LMS algorithm and the
output of this filter would be an estimate of the kth harmonic
of grid current. Complete control structure is shown in Fig. 7.

Fig.5.Generation of an inverter ac current reference from an MPPT

block Fig 7. Complete ac current control structure of the inverter

Here dboost is the duty ratio command given to the

boostconverter switch, Vpv and ipv are the panel voltage and
VI. SIMULATION STUDIES AND RESULTS
current,respectively, Ppv is the panel output power, Vg is the
rms valueof the grid voltage, sin θ is the in-phase unit vector
for the gridvoltage, and i∗is the reference to the current control PV panel is designed for 750W. To obtain this power 3 PV
loop froman MPPT block.The system with the PRIcontroller arrays are connected in parallel. PV Curve and IV curve for
has zero gain for dc while the system with the PRcontroller single PV array is obtained as below.
has a gain of near unity.

V. ADAPTIVE HARMONIC COMPENSATION

The adaptive harmonic compensation technique is based on

the usage of an LMS adaptive filter to estimate a particular
harmonic in the output current. This is then used to generate
a counter voltage reference using a proportional controller to
attenuate that particular harmonic. Fig 8. PV curve
To reduce a particular lower order harmonic (say ik) of
grid current:
1) ikis estimated from the samples of grid current and
phase locked loop (PLL) unit vectors at that frequency;
2) a voltage reference is generated from the estimated
value of ik;
3) generated voltage reference is subtracted from the main
controller voltage reference
Fig 9. IV curve
Fig. 6 shows the block diagram of the adaptive filter that
estimates the kth harmonic ikof the grid current i.
Boost converter is designed to have the output voltage of 50V.
The duty cycle of boost converter is controlled by MPPT. The

MOHANDAS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY-COMPENDIUM OF ABSTRACTS 2014-15

complete base system in simulink without any compensation
is given below.

Fig.10 Complete base system (without compensation)

Fig.13 Complete base system (with PR and adaptive filter)
Output voltage and current of inverter is shown below.It has
a peak output voltage of 50V .

Fig.11. Output voltage and current of inverter

Step up transformer is used to interface inverter to the grid.
The grid voltage has the peak value 325V.FFT analysis of grid
current (without any compensation) is given below.
Fig.14 FFT analysis (with PR and adaptive filter)
FFT analysis shows that DC offset is 1.24%. As per IEEE
standards it should be less than 1%. To compensate DC offset
PRI controller is introduced. FFT analysis using PRI controller
is given in Fig.15.

Fig.12. FFT analysis result

Fig.15 FFT analysis result (PRI and adaptive filter)
Inorder to improve the harmonic mitigation, adaptive filter
and PR controller is used first. Simulink model and FFT DC offet is reduced to 0.14%. Peak value of grid current is
analysis is given in Fig.13 and Fig. 14. 2.449 A. Comparison of performances is given in Table II.

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 TABLE II
COMPARISON OF PERFORMARNCES

PRI
PR
Before +adaptive
Quantity +adaptive
compensation filter
filter

Fundamental 2.242 A 2.321 A 2.449 A

THD 13.52% 3.40% 3.16%

DC offset 1.74% 1.24% 0.14%

nd
6.07% 0.04% 0.04%
2 harmonic
rd
11.42% 3.40% 3.06%
3 harmonic

VII. CONCLUSION
Modification to the inverter current control for a
gridconnectedsingle-phase photovoltaic inverter is presented
in this paper.Here anLMS adaptive filter to estimate a
particular harmonic in the gridcurrent that needs to be
attenuated. It is used along with PR and PRI controller.To
avoid dc biasingof the transformer, PRI controller is
introduced. It is analysed that PRI controller and adaptive
filter effectively mitigates the lower order harmonics.

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