Proposed Research Topic on

Performance Analysis of Inverter Based Maximum Power Point Tracking for PV Grid-Connected
System

The depletion of fossil fuel resources on a worldwide basis has necessitated an urgent search for
alternative energy sources to meet up the present day demands. All non conventional energy sources have
geographical limitations except solar energy. Solar energy has less geographical limitations as compared
to other non conventional sources of energy because of solar energy availability over the entire globe. PV
array system is likely recognized and widely utilized to the forefront in electric power applications. It can
generate direct current electricity without environmental impact and contamination when it is exposed to
solar radiation. Being a semiconductor device, PV system is static, quiet and free of moving parts, and
these make it have little operation and maintenance costs. The efficiency of a PV plant is affected mainly
by three factors: the efficiency of the PV panel (in commercial PV panels it is between 8-15%), the
efficiency of the inverter (95-98%) and the efficiency of the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT)
algorithm (which is over 95%).
PV systems are solar energy supply systems, which either supply power directly to an electrical
equipment or feed energy to grid system. Generally, PVs are considered as an expensive method of
producing electricity. However, in stand-alone situations, PVs are the most economic solutions to provide
the required power service. Moreover, with the development of PV technologies, applications of PVs in
grid-connected situations have grown rapidly, indicating that PVs are very attractive to produce
environmentally benign electricity for diversified purposes.
In recent years, the grid connected PV systems have become more popular because they do not
need battery backups to ensure MPPT. The two typical configurations of a grid-connected PV system are
of single or two stages. In two stages, the first is used to boost the PV array voltage and track the
maximum power; the second allows the conversion of this power into high-quality ac voltage. The
presence of several power stages undermines the overall efficiency, reliability, and compactness of the
system besides increasing the cost. The single stage has numerous advantages, such as simple topology,
high efficiency, etc. Nevertheless, the control strategy has to be designed in order to extract the maximum
available power and to properly transfer it from the PV array to the grid simultaneously. In this case, an
important consideration in the controller design is needed.

Proposed Abstract:

The DC/AC inverters are used in grid-connected Photovoltaic (PV) energy production systems as
the power processing interface between the PV power source and the electric grid. Compared to the grid-
connected PV inverters that have galvanic isolation (either on the DC, or the AC side), the transformer
less PV inverters have the advantages of lower cost, higher efficiency, smaller size and lower weight
 The main emphasis of work (will be) carried out on component of the single-stage grid connected
PV system is the three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI). The voltage-oriented control (VOC) method
has to be developed for VSI that employs an outer dc link voltage control loop and an inner current
control loop to achieve fast dynamic response. The performance of the power flow depends largely on the
quality of the applied current control strategy. In order to improve the performance of VSI , various space
vector based PWM algorithms have to be applied. Moreover to reduce common mode voltage variations,
various PWM algorithms have to be developed. In order to achieve pure sinusoidal output voltage the
active power filter has to be developed.
Among the MPPT techniques, the perturbation and observation (P&O) method is the most
popular because of the simplicity of its control structure. For fast changing atmospheric conditions, the
P&O algorithm cannot distinguish the variations of the output power caused by the tracker perturbation
from those caused by the irradiance variation. The drawback of this P&O method is the necessity of
performing an additional measurement of power. In order to generate the correct MPP reference voltage
under rapidly changing irradiation, a MPPT controller has been proposed. The proposed algorithm can
greatly reduce the power losses caused by the dynamic tracking errors under rapid weather changing
conditions.
To validate the proposed algorithms, several numerical simulation studies have to be developed
on maximum power point track and voltage oriented control by using Matlab-simulink. Finally, the
simulation results have to be compared with the existing methods.

Co-Supervisor Supervisor
Dr. M. Vijay Kumar Dr. T.Brahmananda Reddy
Proposed Plan of Research Work:

Sl.No Task Duration

1 Literature Survey 3 months
2 Definition of the problem 1 month
3 Problem Formulation 2 months
Mathematical analysis of PV cell and module and
4 3 months
obtaining characteristics
Simulation of PV cell and obtaining waveforms under
5 3 months
different conditions
Mathematical and Simulation analysis of a PV fed with
6 3 months
P&O based MPPT Controller
Mathematical analysis of Two stage PV fed inverter by
7 2 months
using SVPWM technique
Simulation of Two stage PV fed inverter by using
8 3 months
SVPWM technique
 Mathematical analysis of a Grid connected PV with
9 4 months
single stage power conversion
Simulation of Grid connected PV with single stage
10 4 months
power conversion with proposed MPPT Technique
Comparative studies of Single stage and Two stage
11 conversion configurations of a PV fed inverter under 4 months
different conditions
12 Preparation of Thesis and Synopsis 4 months
TOTAL 36 months

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