2016 IEEE 22nd International Symposium for Design and Technology in Electronic Packaging (SIITME)

Single-Phase Inverter for Solar Energy Conversion

Controlled with DSpace DS1104
Dorin Petreus, Toma Patarau, Radu Truta, Cristian Orian and Radu Etz
Department of Applied Electronics
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
toma.patarau@ael.utcluj.ro
content of the generated energy and many more. It was
observed that the control strategy of the inverter is a key
component in the proper and efficient operation of the entire
PV system [4].

Abstract The present paper presents a system intended to

be used in the development of photovoltaic inverters with
maximum power point tracking capability. A simulation model
was implemented in MATLAB/SIMULINK and an experimental
model composed of a DSpace 1104 controller board, a Semikron
inverter, a coupling transformer, an LC filter and two 75W solar
panels was developed. The system facilitates the development and
testing of digital control and MPPT algorithms for single-phase
inverters connected to the utility grid.

It was also noted that the main cause of failure in a PV

system is the failure of the inverter [5, 3]. Decreasing solar
panel prices lead designers to increase their project loading
ratio of their inverters. The loading ratio is defined as the ratio
of DC module capacity to AC inverter capacity. It was
observed that for a loading ratio higher than 2.0 more than 16%
potential energy generation is lost [6]. Hence, good operation
of PV systems depends heavily on the design and operation of
the DC-AC inverters.

Keywords Solar inverter, DQ control, DSpace, MPPT.

I. INTRODUCTION
Exhausting fossil fuels lead to increased interest in
harvesting and utilizing renewable energy resources. PV is one
of the top eco-friendly energy sources being pollution-free,
maintenance-free and having long life span. Moreover, this
type of energy is inexhaustible [1, 2]. Compared with other
types of renewable energies like wind, geothermal or biomass,
the PV energy source is a DC power source and works in
conjunction with an inverter to convert the energy to AC [3].
The majority of PV systems require inverters as interfacing
units.

As follows opportunities still exist for power electronics

engineers to improve the operation of PV inverters and
controllers. The present paper presents a rapid prototyping
system intended to be used in the development of photovoltaic
inverters with maximum power point tracking capability. The
bock diagram of the system is represented in Fig. 1. It
comprises of two solar modules connected in series, a
Semikron inverter and a dSpace DS1104 controller board. The
control algorithm for the inverter is implemented in
Matlab/Simulink compiled and loaded to dSpace controller
board. A simulation model for the entire system is also
developed in Simulink to facilitate the development of the
control and maximum power point tracking (MPPT)
algorithms.

In spite of their advantages, solar systems also have some

drawbacks. Some of the main issues posed by PV systems are:
the impact of different loads on the output voltage of the
inverter, nonlinearity, low efficiency of PV panels, intermittent
nature of solar energy, electromagnetic interference, harmonic

Fig. 1. Bloc diagram of the inverter

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2016 IEEE 22nd International Symposium for Design and Technology in Electronic Packaging (SIITME)
The remainder of the paper is organized in six main
sections. First, in Section 2, the simulation model is presented.
Section 3 presents the simulation results. Section 4 describes
the experimental model and section 5 presents the obtained
results. The final section will draw the conclusions.

C. Maximum power point tracking algorithm (MPPT)

A photovoltaic array has an optimum operating point,
known as the maximum power point, which varies according to
cell's temperature and irradiation level. The usual approach for
maximizing the power drawn from solar panels under varying
atmospheric conditions is to use a MPPT algorithm. Perturb
and Observe algorithm is widely used in photovoltaic systems
because of its simplicity and ease of implementation. The
operating voltage of the photovoltaic array is perturbed by
changing the quantity into a given direction and the power
drawn from the photovoltaic array is measured. If it increases,
then the operating voltage is further perturbed in the same
direction whereas, if it decreases, the direction of operating
voltage perturbation is reversed. The drawbacks of this method
are that the operating point oscillates around the maximum
power point, slow response speed, and even tracking in wrong
direction under rapidly changing atmospheric conditions [8].
The sequence of operations performed is shown in the
flowchart given below in Fig.4.

II. SIMULATION MODEL

The following section describes each main bloc of the
photovoltaic system simulation model and its implementation
in Simulink leading to the description of the complete model at
the end of the section.
A. Solar panel
Photovoltaic cell is basically a semiconductor p-n junction
based photodiode which generates electrical power when it is
exposed to sunlight. The power produced by a single
photovoltaic cell is not enough for general use therefore, by
connecting them in series and parallel, higher voltages currents
and power can be obtained. Figure 1 illustrates a simple
equivalent circuit of a photovoltaic cell [7].

RS
Iph

ID

Rsh

Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit of the photovoltaic cell

This model consists of a current source, Iph, which

represents the generated current from photovoltaic cell, a diode
D in parallel with the current source, a shunt resistor, Rsh
expressing the leakage current, and a series resistor Rs
describing the internal resistance to the current flow.
B. Inverter model
The inverter schematic is represented in Fig. 3. It is an Hbridge inverter composed of 4 IGBT transistors IGBT1 to
IGBT4 and an input capacitor C.

Fig. 4. Perturb and Observe

D. Grid syncronization
In the synchronous frame control method, the amplitude
and phase of the grid voltage needs to be known for the control
system. This information is essential for the current and voltage
control loops to work properly. Therefore, a synchronization
method is employed to synchronize the inverter output and
utility grid. There are various methods to extract the phase
information from a given signal [9]. Because of its advantages
and wide practical usage, phase locked loop (PLL) will be
employed in the simulation model. A basic PLL circuit consists
of three essential components: a phase detector, a loop filter,
and a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). Using a negative
feedback loop, PLL minimizes the phase and frequency errors
between the input and output signals [10, 11, 12]. The structure
of PLL is shown in Fig. 5. As it can be noticed, this structure
uses the coordinate Park transformation and the lock is realized
by setting the Vd to zero. A proportional integral regulator can
be used to control this variable and the output of this regulator
is the grid frequency. After the integration of the grid
frequency, the utility voltage angle is obtained, which is fed

Fig. 3. Inverter

The input capacitor can be determined based on the DC

voltage ripple.

S
2 wgVDC VDC

where S is the apparent power, wg is the grid frequency, VDC is

the nominal input voltage and VDC is the input voltage ripple.

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2016 IEEE 22nd International Symposium for Design and Technology in Electronic Packaging (SIITME)
back into the Park transformation module in order to transform
into the synchronous rotating reference frame.

Fig. 5. Grid syncronization PLL

E. Control loops
The system uses two control loops: one external voltage
loop that gives the reference values for the inner current control
loop of the inverter. There are two current PI controllers for
direct, Id, and quadrature, Iq, components of inverter output
current and one for the voltage loop. As can be seen in the Fig.
6, the voltage set-point for voltage control loop is made
through the maximum power point controller. The set-point for
current component, Id, is made by the voltage control loop and
the reference value for the quadrature current component, Iq, is
forced to zero to minimize the injection of reactive power to
the grid [4 truta].

I d cos sin I
I

q sin cos I

I cos sin I d
I

sin cos I q

where is the angle supplied by the PLL loop. The

transformation allows the use of classical PI controllers to be
used to control the inverter.

To simplify the control design process of a three-phase

grid-connected
system
usually
two
fundamental
transformations are used in order to reduce the dimensions of
the mathematical model of the system and decouple the
differential equations. These transformations are Clarke
transformation,
and
Park
transformation.
Clarkes
transformation converts a three-dimensional system to a twodimensional stationary system, . The two coordinate
orthogonal components are then transformed into dq
rotating frame quantities using Parks transformations [8 truta].
If the dq frame is rotating with the same frequency as the grid
voltage, then the output components of the Park transformation
are stationary. Because the inverter is single phase only the
Park transformation is used. For the axis component the grid
current is used and the component is created artificially
delaying the component with /2, Fig. 6. The equations
describing the direct and inverse park transformation are
presented below:

Fig. 6. Control loops

F. Complete system description

The detailed simulation model of the inverter and its
controller is shown in Fig. 7. The solar panel model, the
inverter, the control loops and the PLL are represented.
The model shown in Fig. 7 represents only the Simulink
implementation of a solar inverter control technique. The next
step was to modify it in order to use it with dSpace DS1104
platform. The DS1104 is a so called rapid prototyping real time
development board, which means that generation of a working
prototype is involving very small procedural delay. Real time
interface provides some new Simulink blocks as: analog to
digital converters, digital to analog converters, and PWM
generator block.

Fig. 7. Complete simulation model

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2016 IEEE 22nd International Symposium for Design and Technology in Electronic Packaging (SIITME)
It can be observed that once the maximum operating point
is found the system starts oscillating around it. Analyzing Fig.
8 and 9 it can be concluded that perfect match exists between
the solar panel values obtained from its I-V and P-V
characteristics and simulation results of the proposed model.

III. SIMULATION RESULTS

The effect of irradiance on current-voltage and powervoltage characteristic curve is shown in Fig. 8. From the figure,
it can be concluded that when the irradiance is 1000W/m2, the
output power of the solar panel is 150W. As the solar radiation
decreases, the output power decreases also.

The response of the MPPT algorithm are represented in Fig.

10. A zoom is shown in Fig 10 that shows the oscillation of the
MPPT around the MPP point.

Fig. 8. The solar panel characteristics at different values of irradiance

Fig 9 represents the waveforms that describe the operation

of the system when a change in irradiance occurs. The
irradiance [W/m2], power [W], inverter output current [A]
attenuated by a factor of 100, grid voltage [V] attenuated by a
factor of 1800, solar panel voltage [V] and the solar panel
current [A] are shown.

Fig. 10. MPPT response

IV. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

A. DSpace controller
DS1104 is a controller board suited for inverter control. It
enables the link with Matlab/Simulink. Using Simulink, the
algorithms are implemented, compiled and converted to C-code
which is then loaded automatically to the real time dSPACE
processor. Linking process implies using dSPACE input-output
library components like: DS104ADC, DS104DAC, etc. A
block diagram of dSPACE is represented in Fig.10

PCI connector
Power PC
Communication
procesor
Memory

DS1104
Slave DSP
TMS320F240
Memory

Timers

Serial interface

Interupts
ADC

Capture inputs

DAC

PWM generator

Digital IO

Input/output
Hardware
Fig. 11. Simplified diagram of dSPAEC DS1104 controler board

B. DSpace implementation
The algorithm implemented in dSPACE is represented in
Fig. 11. Three DS1104ADC blocks are used to read the PV
voltage, the grid voltage and the grid current. Four
DS1104DAC are used for testing and a DS1104SL_DSP block
is used to generate the PWM signals to control the inverter.

Fig. 9. Waveforms for the system being modeled.

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2016 IEEE 22nd International Symposium for Design and Technology in Electronic Packaging (SIITME)

Fig. 12. Control algorithm implemented in DSpace

V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The experimental results that describe the operation of the
inverter are represented in Fig. 13. The first waveform presents
the phase of the grid voltage detected by the PLL circuit,
second waveform represents the output current of the inverter
injected into the grid and the last waveform represents the
output voltage of the inverter filtered.

Fig. 14. MPPT operation

Fig. 13. Experimental results

Fig 14 represent the operation of the MPPT algorithm. The

step frequency is 1kHz and the amplitude of the step voltage is
30mV.
The experimental setup is represented in Fig. 15. It consists
of: 1 oscilloscope, 2- current probe, 3 - DSpace DS1104
control board, 4 inverter driver, 5 voltage and current
sensors, 6 differential voltage probe, 7 grid coupling
transformer, 8 laboratory power supply, 9 single phase Hbridge inverter, 10 LC filter.

978-1-5090-4445-0/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE

Fig. 15. Experimental setup

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2016 IEEE 22nd International Symposium for Design and Technology in Electronic Packaging (SIITME)
Z.A. Ghania, M.A. Hannana, A. Mohameda, Simulation model linked
PV inverter implementation utilizing dSPACE DS1104 controller,
Energy and Buildings, Vol. 57, Pages 6573, February 2013.
[5] R.A. Messenger, J. Ventre Photovoltaic System Engineering CRC
Press, Boca Raton, FL 2004
[6] Jeremy Good, Jeremiah X. Johnson, Impact of inverter loading ratio on
solar photovoltaic system performance, Applied Energy, Vol. 177, ,
Pages 475486, 1 September 2016.
[7] A.A. Hassan, F.H. Fahmy, A.A. Nafeh, M.A. El-Sayed, Modeling and
simulation of a single phase grid connected photovoltaic system,
WSEAS Transactions on Systems and Control, vol. 5, pp. 16-25, 2010.
[8] R. Kiranmayi, K. Vijaya Kumar Reddy and M.Vijaya Kumar,
Modeling and a MPPT Method for Solar Cells, Journal of Engineering
and Applied Sciences, Vol. 3, N1, pp. 128 - 133, 2008.
[9] Remus Teodorescu, Marco Liserre and Pedro Rodrguez Grid
converters for photovoltaic and wind power systems 2011 John Wiley
& Sons, Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-470-05751-3
[10] Arti Gadekar, V. B. Virulkar, Effective dspace Inverter Controller for
PV Application, IEEE Students Conference on Electrical, Electronics
and Computer Science, Amravati, India, 2014.
[11] Michael E. Ropp, Member IEEE, and Sigifredo Gonzalez,
Development of a MATLAB/Simulink Model of a Single-Phase GridConnected Photovoltaic System, IEEE Transactions on Energy
Conversion, Vol. 24 no. 1, pp 195 - 202 April 2009; DOI:
10.1109/TEC.2008.2003206
[12] A.A. Hassan, F.H. Fahmy, A.A. Nafeh, M.A. El-Sayed, Modeling and
simulation of a single phase grid connected photovoltaic system,
WSEAS Transactions on Systems and Control, Vol. 5, pp. 16-25, 2010.
[4]

VI. CONCLUSIONS
The paper presented the development of a system intended
to be used in the development of photovoltaic inverters with
maximum power point tracking capability. A simulation model
was implemented in MATLAB/SIMULINK and an
experimental model composed of a DSpace 1104 controller
board, a Semikron inverter coupled to the utility grid through a
coupling transformer, an LC filter and two 75W solar panels
was developed. It can be concluded that the proposed model
presented in this paper achieves good results and can be used
successfully in rapid prototyping development, digital control
and MPPT algorithm development and test of solar inverters.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper is supported through the program "Parteneriate
in domenii prioritare PN II", by MEN UEFISCDI, project
no. 53/01.07.2014.
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F. Blaabjerg, Z. Chen, S. Kjaer Power electronics as efficient interface
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20-23 Oct 2016, Oradea, Romania