Phase, amplitude and frequency of the utility voltage are critical information for the operation of the grid-connected inverter systems. In such applications, an accurate and fast detection of the phase angle, amplotude and frequency of the utility voltage is essential to assure the correct generation of the reference signals and to cope with the new upcoming standards. This paper presents a new phase-locked-loop (PLL) method for single-phase systems. The novelty consists in generating the orthogonal voltage system using a structure based on second order generalized integrator (SOGI). The proposed structure has the following advantages: — it has a simple implementation; — the generated orthogonal system is filtered without delay by the same structure due to its resonance at the fundamental frequency, — the proposed structure is not affected by the frequency changes. The solutions for the discrete implementation of the new proposed structure are also presented. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper proposes a new technique for grid synchronization under unbalanced and distorted conditions, i.e., the dual second order generalised integrator - frequency-locked loop (DSOGI-FLL). This grid synchronization system results from the application of the instantaneous symmetrical components method on the stationary and orthogonal alphabeta reference frame. The second order generalized integrator concept (SOGI) is exploited to generate in-quadrature signals used on the alphabeta reference frame. The frequency-adaptive characteristic is achieved by a simple control loop, without using either phase-angles or trigonometric functions. In this paper, the development of the DSOGI-FLL is plainly exposed and hypothesis and conclusions are verified by simulation and experimental results

This paper proposes a power smoothing strategy for a 1-MW grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant. A hybrid energy storage system (HESS) composed of a vanadium redox battery and a supercapacitor bank is used to smooth the fluctuating output power of the PV plant. The power management of the HESS is purposely designed to reduce the required power rating of the SCB to only one-fifth of the VRB rating and to avoid the operation of the VRB at low power levels, thus increasing its overall efficiency. The PV plant including the HESS has been modeled using MATLAB/Simulink and PLECS software environment. The effectiveness of the proposed power control strategy is confirmed through extensive simulation results.

The modular multilevel converter (MMC) is the state‐of‐the‐art for multilevel converter topologies. This study presents the operation of the MMC using the multilevel selective harmonic elimination pulse‐width modulation (MSHE‐PWM) technique. MSHE‐PWM offers tight control of the low‐order harmonics and the lowest switching frequency for the power semiconductors among all modulation techniques. A comprehensive analysis of the modulation methods for the MMC leads to two different modulation patterns for MSHE‐PWM. A method for selecting the number of sub‐modules in the phase‐legs of the converter is also proposed in this study. Simulation results for both patterns are provided and verified through matching experimental results from a single phase 11‐level laboratory prototype.

An accurate and less-disturbing active antiislanding method suitable for grid-connected converters using phase-locked loop (PLL) based grid synchronization is proposed in this paper. The orthogonal signal generator required by a single-phase PLL is built using a second-order generalized integrator. The inverter current reference is slightly modified each output cycle by an injected signal, and a feedback signal is extracted from the voltage of the point of common coupling (PCC). When the grid becomes unavailable, the feedback signal moves outside of a preset threshold value. The disturbance caused by this method is small compared to other active antiislanding methods, such as active frequency drift or frequency shift up/down. The method does not affect the zero crossing of the injected current, can be used to estimate the grid impedance, and is highly robust to different grid disturbances and stiffness. The performance of the proposed method has been studied through extensive simulations using MATLAB/Simulink and experiments. Selected results are presented to confirm its validity.