2014 IEEE Students Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science

978-1-4799-2526-1/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

Single-Phase Grid-Connected Photovoltaic System
Based on Ripple Correlation Control Maximum
Power Point Tracking

Sandeep. N Mutta Krishna Murthy

P. S. Kulkarni
M.Tech Student M.Tech Student Associate Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
VNIT Nagpur, India VNIT Nagpur, India VNIT Nagpur, India
sandeepbabu28@gmail.com kittu237@gmail.com pskulkarni@eee.vnit.ac.in

Abstract This work presents a comparison of ripple
correlation control maximum power point tracking (MPPT)
technique and the modified version of the same MPPT applied to
single-phase, single-stage, grid-connected photovoltaic (PV)
system, as the technique is fast and suitable for fast changing
environmental conditions. Both the techniques are compared on
the basis of the time taken to reach (track) the MPP, operating
point oscillations about MPP and the dependence of the
algorithms, if any, on array configuration and parameters. An
LCL-Filter based grid connected inverter with proportional-
resonant (PR) current controller is suggested to provide power to
the line with unity power factor and the inverter offers much less
total harmonic distortion. The focus is on presenting a systematic
design procedure for AC current, DC voltage controllers for the
VSI and low complexity grid synchronization method. The
complete system is numerically simulated in MATLAB and the
results are presented for rapidly changing irradiation levels.
Index Terms LCL filter, photovoltaic system, power
conditioning, single-phase grid-connected inverter.
I. INTRODUCTION
The increase of energy demand yields in an increased
development of power distribution systems and interest in
clean technologies is boosting the market, research attention
toward renewable energy [1]. Photovoltaic (PV) energy is
presently considered to be one of the most useful natural
energy sources since it is free, abundant, and pollution-free and
distributed throughout the earth. A general grid-connected PV
system has more than one power-processing stage [2]. The first
stage is a dc-dc converter which draws maximum available
power from the solar array by incorporating maximum-power-
point tracking (MPPT) and also increases the dc-link voltage
level. The output of this stage is inverted using single or
multilevel dc-ac inverter before feeding into the grid. The
reliability, compactness and cost effectiveness of the PV
system can be improved by employing a single stage power
processing unit (dc-ac inverter). Inverter in a single-stage
system has to extract maximum available power from the solar
array by employing a proper MPPT algorithm and dumps the
power derived on the grid by maintaining power quality
discipline of the grid. Several MPPT algorithms have been
proposed from time-to-time [3]. Some of the popular
techniques are the hill climbing method, incremental
conductance method, constant voltage method, method,
system oscillation method and the ripple correlation control
method (RCC). Selection of a particular method depends on
the tracking speed required, implementation complexity,
accuracy and cost. The basic principle of the RCC MPPT
algorithm is to exploit current and voltage oscillations caused
by the sinusoidal power injection to the grid. Analysis of these
oscillations provides information about the power slope and
one can evaluate if the PV system operates close to the
maximum power point. The RCC scheme proposed in [4] uses
the first order high pass and low pass filters for extracting the
information regarding the sign of p/v which is used for
changing the dc link voltage reference in order to approach the
maximum power operating point. However selection of time
constant for the filters is not discussed and inappropriate
selection would lead to slow response in case of rapidly
changing irradiation. In order to overcome this, a modified
ripple correlation control (MRCC) is proposed in [5] that
produces a fast response and guarantees the maximum power
point operation of the single phase single stage grid connected
PV system.






















Fig. 1. Single-phase single-stage grid-connected PV system.

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This paper deals with design of current controller for
maintaining the line current with unity power factor, voltage
controller to regulate the dc link voltage to a value
corresponding to the voltage at MPP. In addition to this, the
transient response of grid current for various grid voltage
disturbances are included that shows the high performance of
the controllers and provides a comparative study of both the
RCC and MRCC MPPT based on the simulation carried out on
a 60Wpeak grid connected PV system.


II. SYSTEM STRUCTURE AND CHARACTERISTICS
Fig. 1 shows the 60Wpeak single phase grid-connected PV
inverter. The power circuit topology includes an LCL filter as a
interface between the inverter and grid. Sinusoidal pulse width
modulation (SPWM) with unipolar switching, LCL filter is
employed to achieve decreased switching ripple with only a
small increase in filter hardware as compared to that of the L
or LC filter with bipolar switching [6]. The voltage controller
produces the gird current reference by comparing the actual dc
link voltage with the maximum power point voltage given by
the MPPT algorithm, which is then multiplied with the grid
voltage template provided by the grid synchronizer. The
control voltage produced by the injected grid current regulator
is used to generate pulses for the grid connected PV inverter.
Fig. 2 shows the structure of RCC-MPPT proposed in [4].











Fig. 2. Block diagram of RCC-MPPT and Vmpp,ref generator.

Assuming that the voltage and power oscillation frequency
is known, RCC-MPPT uses filtering approach to extract the
alternative components of PV power and voltage for reaching
MPP. Fig. 3 shows the structure of MRCC-MPPT in which
mean value function is used to overcome the complications in
selection of filter time constants and to generate faster response
in tracking MPP.











Fig. 3. Block diagram of MRCC-MPPT and Vmpp,ref generator.

The lowest order harmonics that appears in the harmonic
spectrum of the output voltage of the full-bridge VSI are at the
sidebands of 2mf, where mf is the frequency modulation index.
Since the inverter switching frequency is set to 20 kHz, the
lowest order of the harmonics of the inverter is (2mf 1) = 799.
According to the standard IEEE-1547, any current harmonic
with an order greater than 35 must have a magnitude that is no
greater than 0.3% of the rated current of the distributed
resource output. Thus, the primary design guide for the inverter
output filter is to make the magnitude of the major harmonic
current of the inverter less than 0.3% of the rated current. LCL
filter values are chosen based on these guidelines.

III. CONTROL SCHEME OF SINGLE PHASE GRID CONNECTED
VSI
The design of the control system for the inverter can be
divided into three parts: 1) current controller, 2) grid
synchronization and 3) DC link voltage controller. A current
controller regulates the sinusoidal AC current injected into the
grid and a voltage controller regulates the DC link voltage at a
desirable level as indicated by the MPPT algorithm.
A. Current Controller
There are three major output current control techniques for
the single phase VSI: hysteresis band, predictive and sinusoidal
pulse width modulation (SPWM) control. The traditional
method of SPWM control uses a proportional-integral (PI)
compensator in the feedback loop to regulate the output
current. However, while PI compensators have excellent
performances on regulating DC quantities, tracking a
sinusoidal current reference would lead to steady state
magnitude and phase errors [7]. The recently introduced
proportional-resonant (PR) controllers are very much suitable
for single phase grid-connected converters. Compared with PI
compensator, PR compensator can provide larger gain at the
fundamental frequency to eliminate the steady state error [8].
Using the PR controllers, the converter reference tracking
performance can be enhanced and previously known
shortcomings associated with conventional PI controllers can
be alleviated. These shortcomings include steady-state errors in
single-phase systems and the need for synchronous dq
transformation in three-phase systems. The mathematical
model of the current controller and the plant are as shown in
Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Block diagram of inner current loop.

The plant ( ) s G
f
is the transfer function of the LCL filter,

pv
P
pv
V
pv
P
~

pv
V
~

v
p
sign

dc
V
* *
dc
V

ref mpp
V
,

pv
P
pv
V
pv
P
~

pv
V
~

v
p
sign
dc
V
ref mpp
V
,

* *
dc
V

+

+

( ) s I
ref
g

( ) s I
g

( ) s V
inv

( ) s V
g

-
-

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which is of the form:

(1)

The controller ( ) s G
i
is responsible for reference signal
tracking. It consists of a damped generalized integrator tuned to
resonate at the grid frequency
0
W
. The structure of PR
controller is as follows:

( )
2
0 0
2
0 ir
pr i
W s 2W s
s W 2K
K s G
+ +
+ = (2)

Where the proportional gain is tuned in the same way as
that for a PI controller, and it basically determines the
dynamics of the system in terms of bandwidth, phase, and gain
margin. According to the analysis proposed in [9] it seems
reasonable to select a high value resonant gain
ir
K in order to
obtain a high attenuation of current harmonic, a low value of
in order to get a low bandwidth so that the selective harmonic
compensation is effective for PR structure shown in (2). ( )
inv
G s
is the transfer function of the inverter bridge, which is modeled
as a first order lag system with time constant equal to 1.5 times
the switching period. Fig. 5 shows the Bode plot of the inner
current loop with and without Current controller.














Fig. 5. Bode plot of inner current loop.

B. Grid Synchronizer
The grid synchronizer consists of two parts: 1) a grid
voltage estimator, and 2) an amplitude identifier [11]. The grid
voltage estimator takes the grid voltage as the input and outputs
two signals. One is aligned with the grid voltage (parallel
component), and second signal that leads the grid voltage by
(orthogonal component). The state space form of the estimator
is expressed as:



Where
2 1
, y y are the normalized parallel component and
orthogonal component of the grid voltage. A grid voltage
amplitude estimator is needed to determine the amplitude of
the grid voltage. The amplitude identifier has the form
2
2
2
1

y y V
g
+ = .

C. Voltage Controller
In general using electrolytic capacitors are less desirable for
their short operational lifetime. Hence Long lifetime film
capacitors serves as a substitute, however their high prices limit
the size that can be used in PV inverters. This causes a
significant double line frequency ripple on the DC link voltage
which may further couple through the control loop. Therefore a
band stop filter is placed on the dc voltage feedback loop to
attenuate the ripple. Fig. 6 shows the block diagram of the
outer voltage control loop. A simple PI controller is used as a
voltage controller ( ) s G
v
to regulate the dc link voltage.
Fig. 6. Block diagram of outer voltage loop.

The value of the proportional gain of the voltage controller
is selected such that the closed loop bandwidth of the voltage
control loop is about 1/150th of the closed current loop [10].
Fig .7 shows the Bode plot of the voltage control loop with and
without voltage controller.














Fig. 7. Bode plot of outer voltage loop.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
In order to predict the comparative performance of the
MPPT techniques, simulation studies of the single phase grid
connected PV system shown in Fig. 1 are carried out on
MATLAB/SIMULINK platform. The specifications for the
solar module used in the simulations study, corresponding to
two different irradiation levels (1000 and 600
2
W/m ) are
( )
( ) ( )s L L s R C L L s C L L
1 + s C R
s G
g i
2
d f g i
3
f g i
f d
f
+ + + +
=
ref mpp
V
,

dc
V
( ) s I
ref
g
( ) s I
g

Grid synchronization
Grid De-synchronization

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provided in Table I. The grid connected PV inverter system is
subjected to a rapid irradiation level is changed from 1000 to
600
2
W/m at t=2s and reverted back to 1000
2
W/m at 3s as
shown in Fig. 8. The temperature is considered to be constant
(
C 25
0
) during the simulation. The parameters of the grid
connected PV inverter system and the values of the control
parameters are as shown in Table II.

TABLE I
PV MODULE SPECIFICATIONS

Parameter Symbol Values
Peak power
p
P 60W 35W
Peak power voltage
mp
V 17.1V 16.8V
Current at peak power
mp
I 3.5A 2.1A
Short circuit current
sc
I 3.8A 2.3A
Open circuit voltage
oc
V 21.1V 20.4V
Solar irradiation S 1000
2
W/m 600
2
W/m

Simulation results of the RCC MPPT technique and MRCC
MPPT technique for step change in irradiation level are shown
in Fig. 9 and Fig. 11 respectively. Fig. 10 shows the
relationship curve between PV power Ppv versus PV voltage
Vpv.

TABLE II
PARAMETERS OF THE PV INVERTER SYSTEM

Parameter Symbol Value
Grid voltage(rms),frequency
g g
f , V 10V,50Hz
Rated output current(rms)
g
I 6A
Nominal DC link voltage
dc
V 21.1V
DC link capacitor
dc
C 3300F
Grid side inductor
g
L 60H
Inverter side inductor
i
L 460H
Filter capacitor
d
C 2F
Filter damping resistor
d
R 1.5
Switching frequency
sw
f 20kHz
Proportional gain of current controller
pr
K 6
Resonant gain of current controller
ir
K 100
Damping ratio of current controller

0.01
Proportional gain of voltage controller
p
K 0.5
Integral gain of voltage controller
i
K 10
Filter time constant(sec) 0.05

The curve starts from the minimum PV power point (A)
initially and moves towards the maximum power point (B)
gradually as the MPPT algorithm starts varying the reference
voltage. Fig. 9(a), 9(b) and Fig. 11(a), 11(b) shows the
variation of the PV current and PV voltage respectively. The
curves starts from the initial point and moves towards PV
current and voltage values corresponding to maximum power
operating point current and voltage corresponding to
1000
2
W/m . At t=2s the irradiation level is changed abruptly
from 1000 to 600
2
W/m during which the operating point starts
shifting from point B to point C which corresponds to the
maximum power operating point for irradiation level of
600
2
W/m . The irradiation level is maintained constant at
600
2
W/m for duration of 1s and is reverted back to 1000
2
W/m ,
which cause the drift of operating from point C towards point
B again as shown in Fig .10. From Fig. 9(a), 9(b), 9(c) and Fig.
11(a), 11(b), 11(c) the main points that emerge out for the
comparative study are the transient tracking speed, tracking
accuracy, and ripple in the PV power at MPP. These
parameters are considered as the performance indices for the
RCC-MPPT and MRCC-MPPT, which are shown in Table III.
It is observed from the simulated performance that changes in
PV current and dc-link voltage are smooth during the change in
irradiation level which implies a satisfactory transient
performance for the system. It is seen from Fig. 12(a) and Fig.
12(b) that the line current is sinusoidal and in phase with the
line voltage, which implies that the grid connected PV system
is feeding only active power to the line. The line current
produces an almost unity power factor. The grid synchronizer
is immune to the grid disturbances which make the
performance of the grid synchronizer, current controller and
voltage controller with respect to the injected grid current
appreciable.

TABLE III
PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF RCC-MPPT AND MRCC-MPPT FOR STEP
CHANGE IN IRRADIATION

MPPT
scheme
Tracking
time (sec)
Power
ripple near
MPP(watts)
Transient
tracking
speed
Accuracy
MRCC 0.2 59.8-59.1 Fast Accurate
RCC 0.45 59.7-59.65 Slow
Not so
accurate

Fig. 12(a) and (b) shows grid current transient response for
rapid change in irradiation level and periodic grid disturbances
such as harmonics in the grid voltage, frequency deviation. The
irradiation level is maintained constant at 1000
2
W/m till t=1s
with no disturbances in the grid. Irradiation level is decreased
at t=1.2s, after which the grid current takes a very small time to
settle to new maximum power operating current value. At
t=1.6s the grid voltage is distorted with a THD of 8%. Further
grid voltage is subjected to frequency deviation of 1 Hz with a
THD of 5% and finally irradiation level is increased to
1000
2
W/m at t=1.8s with grid frequency=50 Hz.
In all the above consequences the proposed control solution
meets the requirements of grid current harmonic distortion by
keeping the each current harmonic less than the specified
distortion level. Table IV shows the variation in %THD of grid
current for various grid disturbances and varying irradiation
levels. It can be seen that the grid current harmonic distortion
increases with the increase in the grid voltage distortion and
also with deviation in the grid frequency. The PV inverter
system exhibits fast transient and steady state response even
under rapidly changing irradiation levels maintaining the
sinusoidal grid current.

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Fig.8. Step change in Irradiation level.











Fig.9.(a) Current (Ipv) Waveform of PV module with RCC-MPPT.












Fig.9.(b) Voltage (Vpv) Waveform of PV module with RCC-MPPT.











Fig.9.(c) PV Power (Ppv ) Waveform of PV module with RCC-MPPT.










Fig.12.(a) Transient response of grid current.












Fig.10. PV Power Ppv versus Vpv for step change in Irradiation.











Fig.11.(a) Current (Ipv) Waveform of PV module with MRCC-MPPT.












Fig.11.(b) Voltage (Vpv) Waveform of PV module with MRCC-MPPT.











Fig.11.(c) PV Power(Ppv) Waveform of PV module with MRCC-MPPT.










Fig.12.(b) Transient response of grid current.
B
C
A
Irradiation (0.5KW/div)
Irradiation (1KW/m
2
)


Irradiation (0.5KW/m
2
)


Vpv (5V/div)


0.5s/div
Ipv (0.5A/div)
Ppv (10W/div)
Ipv (0.5A/div)


Vpv (5V/div)


Ppv (10W/div)


Igrid (5A/div) Vgrid (5V/div) Igrid (5A/div) Vgrid (5V/div)
0.5s/div
0.5s/div
0.5s/div
0.5s/div
0.5s/div
0.05s/div 0.05s/div
0.5s/div

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TABLE IV
%THD OF GRID CURRENT FOR VARIOUS GRID VOLTAGE DISTURBANCES

Irradiation
(
2
W/m )
Grid Frequency
(Hz)
%THD of
Grid
Voltage
%THD of
Grid current
1000
49 5 3.48
50 8 3.54
51 5 3.79
600
49 5 4.32
50 8 4.40
51 5 4.62

V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, design of controllers, LCL filter for a single-
phase grid connected inverter system are presented. By
employing unipolar switching scheme for the inverter with
LCL filter, the current injected into grid is sinusoidal and
ripple free. Further, LCL filter can provide good grid
synchronization without knowledge of grid impedance.
Performance comparison of MRCC-MPPT and RCC-MPPT
are done as applied to single-phase single-stage PV inverter.
From the results, it is guaranteed that MRCC algorithm results
in higher accuracy, faster response as compared to the RCC
algorithm for generating the MPP reference voltage. A low
complexity grid synchronization method ensures that the VSI
is well synchronized and the grid current is in phase with the
grid voltage even under grid disturbances ensuring unity power
factor operation of the inverter. Simulation results confirm the
effectiveness and feasibility of the developed control scheme
and algorithm.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the authorities of VNIT,
Nagpur for providing facilities to carry out the research work.

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