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Abstract. Extensive measurements were carried out at a measurements were carried out to assess the accuracy of
1 MW photovoltaic (PV) installation with focus on the analysis the PQ instruments. For voltage harmonics larger than
of harmonic emission both for classical harmonics below 2.5 kHz 0.2% and current harmonics larger than 0.2 A the error
and higher frequency emission in the range of 2-150 kHz. The for magnitude is smaller than ±2% and the error for phase
installation consists of multiple inverters with different rated angle is smaller than ±1°.
power. Beside the measurement of total emission of all inverters,
in one part of the measurement the inverters were switched off Voltages and currents in the higher frequency range
and on stepwise following a predefined schedule. This provides a (2 – 150 kHz) were measured at one large inverter (three
comprehensive basis for a detailed characterisation of the phases) and four small inverters (each single phase). Two
interactions between the inverters in terms of harmonic emission. specific network analysers with a sampling rate of
After a description of the measurement setup the paper discusses 1 MS/s and a resolution of 16 bits were used. The current
the total emission of the installation, the dependency of the
was measured using current clamps. During the switching
emission on the supply voltage distortion and the potential of
harmonic cancellation due to phase angle diversity between the
of inverters raw data in time-domain was stored
different inverters. The results enable a better understanding of continuously. Otherwise three seconds every minute were
the harmonic emission behaviour of large PV installations. The stored to reduce the data size. Afterwards, a high pass
paper is intended to be an contribution to the development and filter (elliptic, 3rd order, 2 kHz passband) was applied to
improvement of respective harmonic models. the measured data. Subsequently it was split in 200-ms-
blocks (5-Hz-resolution) and for each block a discrete
Key words Fourier transformation was performed. All values are
presented in the logarithmic unit dBµV, where 120 dBµV
Photovoltaic inverter, Harmonics, cancellation effect, corresponds to 1 V and 0 dBµV to 1 µV. For currents the
Higher frequency emission unit dBµA is used respectively. The network analysers
have accuracy better than ±5% for currents larger than
1. Measurement Setup 30 dBµA and ±2% for voltages larger than 40 dBµV.
The PV installation comprises of nine large inverters In order to obtain comprehensive data for a systematic
with rated power of 100 kVA and eleven small inverters analysis of harmonic emission of a different number of
with rated power in the range between 1 kVA and 10 kVA inverters and the interaction among them, a coordinated
(total output of nearly 50 kVA). All large inverters are switching of the inverters was performed in one part of
three phase while all small inverters are single phase. the measurement. The inverters were switched off
For the measurement of low order harmonics, eleven PQ sequentially in a predetermined order (Table I) and with a
instruments complying with IEC 61000-4-30 Class A were defined time delay. A part of small inverters were turned
used. The voltage and current spectra (magnitude and off in the beginning followed by the large inverters and
phase angle related to voltage fundamental) were the remaining small inverters. Figure 1 illustrates the
measured with each instrument for almost two days using switch-off procedure by means of active power. Power
an averaging interval of 150 periods (three seconds). Each Line Communication (PLC) is used in the network for
of the large inverters, the sum of all small inverters and the meter reading but was switched off during this
total sum of the installation were monitored. Calibration experiment.
Power at the Transformer
50 Table I Switch off sequence of inverters
Time Time
0 Inverter Setting Inverter Setting
(mm:ss) (mm:ss)
90
0:55-3:20 7 Small Inverters 6:20 Inv 2 I
-150 150
120 60
3:50 Inv 8 I 6:45 Inv 1 I
L1
-200 L2 4:15 Inv 7 I 7:10 Inv 9 I
L3
-250 4:40 Inv 6 II 7:35-8:50 4 small inverters
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Time in Mins
150 30 5:05 Inv 5 II 9:00 Measurement End
Fig. 1 Total power during coordinated switching OFF
voltage harmonics for both states (all inverters ON and
OFF) are presented in Figure 3b. Both plots are limited to
Inv 1 - I
Inv 2 - I
the order 25 as the harmonics beyond are insignificant
Inv 3 - I and non-informative. 99th percentiles of the data are
180 Inv 4 - II shown
0 (cf. IEC 61000-3-14). Considerable current is
Inv 5 - II
Inv 6 - II
observed for harmonic orders 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. 5th and
50 Inv 7 - I 7th harmonic current are predominant and hence emphasis
Inv 8 - I is laid on these harmonics in the later analysis. The
Inv 9 - I voltage spectrum is evaluated for before and after the
100
Sum Small Inv
switching process to analyse the impact of the inverters.
330 The profile of voltage spectrum in the ON state is similar
Current in A
210
V
i2
i
2
1.4
40
1.2
Voltage in %
Current in A
30 1
0.8
20
0.6
0.4
10
0.2
0 0
5 10 15 20 25 5 10 15 20 25
Harmonic Order Harmonic Order
Fig. 3a Spectrum of Harmonic Currents (total) Fig. 3b Spectrum of Harmonic Voltage (Busbar)
120 60
150 30
1.8 Inv 7
Current in A
Inv 8
1.6 210 4 330 Inv 9
Sum Small Inv
1.4
6
1.2
240 300
1 270
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Time in Mins
Fig 6 5th Harmonic Current Clusters (L1)
Fig. 4a Time Characteristic of Voltage THDV
90
5
60 120 60
4
Voltage in V
50 3
150 30
2
40
1
THC in A
30 180 0
20
210 330
10
240 300
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 270
Time in Mins
Fig. 4b Time Characteristic of THC (total current) Fig 7 5th Harmonic Voltage (L1)
or strongly varying. In order to meet this shortcoming, current in L3 is due to a possible impedance variation of
total harmonic current (THC) is defined as absolute value the phases. The setting II inverters have a smaller
as follows: magnitude. The total harmonic current of all small
inverters (SSI) is very low and therefore not further
50
considered.
THC I i
2
(1)
i 2 Figure 6 shows the 5th harmonic current in phase L1
The time plot of the THC (Figure 4b) shows the during the whole switching interval in the complex plane.
dominating impact of the nine large inverters on the The phases L2 and L3 show similar behaviour. All large
current distortion. inverters except Inv 8 show a significant change in
magnitude in the range of 30% to 50%. The level of
B. Emission of individual inverters variation is directly related to the switching order. Inv 8
was switched off first and does not show any “variation
An extensive analysis of all relevant harmonics was
carried out. For space reason the paper presents a detailed trail”. Inv 9 was turned off last and has the highest
study of 5th harmonic and discusses only additional variation (longest trail). The 5th harmonic current
findings for the other harmonics. The 99th percentile values emission of the inverters strongly depends on the voltage
of the 5th harmonic current of individual inverters before distortion (cf. Figure 8). As soon as the 5th voltage
switch-off are shown in Figure 5. The slightly higher harmonic decreases due to switching off the other
inverters (4th to 7th minute in Figure 8), the 5th current
8
harmonic drops considerably in magnitude until the
L1
L2
inverter is turned off. In case of sinusoidal supply voltage
7 L3
conditions the current magnitude would become a
6 minimum. Due to the existing background distortion this
5
value can however not be obtained from the
measurements. A similar behaviour has been observed
Current in A
4
for other types of PV inverters as well as for car charging
3 rectifiers or switched mode power supplies with active
power factor correction. Therefore a simple constant
2
current source is not sufficient to model these inverters in
1 terms of harmonics.
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 SSI The impact of switching off inverters on the grid
Inverter
voltage is depicted in Figure 7. The 5th harmonic voltage
Fig. 5 5th Harmonic Current (all phases) is observed to drop by nearly 50%. The 5 th harmonic
Fifth Voltage and Current of Inverter 9
6 10 Magnitude Linearity Phase Angle Linearity
Fifth Voltage -70
Fifth Current 4.5
8 -80
5
Voltage in V
6
Voltage in V
Current in A
3.5 -100
4
4 -110
3
-120
3
2 2.5
-130
Voltage in V
4
Current in A
150 0.4 30 150 30
combination with the inductive grid impedance causes the 0.2
2
magnitude and phase angle between voltage and current Fig. 10 9th Harmonics a) Voltage; b) Current
for 5th harmonics. The slope of the curve is determined not
only by the sensitivity of emission of the inverter to the In order to validate the reliability of the data, the
voltage variations but also by the impedance of the measured sum at the busbar is compared with the
upstream grid. However, as far as an individual inverter is calculated vectorial summation of individual inverters
concerned as in the Figure 9, the inverter characteristics and the percentage error is calculated. For all considered
are dominant and the grid impedance plays a minor role. harmonics the error is smaller than 5% for 95% of the
For 7th harmonic currents the setting I inverters have measurement data, which means a reliable data set for
nearly six times higher emission than setting II inverters. further diversity calculations.
Moreover setting II inverters are observed to have a higher Two indices are commonly used to quantify the phase
phase angle variation. The scatter plots between the cancellation effect: diversity factor and summation
voltage and current shows linear relationship only for exponent. The diversity factor is determined by
setting I inverters. Figure 10 exemplarily shows the total
n
9th harmonic current and voltage at the busbar as the
inverters are switched off. Similar curves are also observed
Vector sum
( h)
IVEC
I i 1
( h)
i
for 11th and 13th harmonics. k (ph) (3)
( h) n
Arithmetic sum I ARI
C. Phase Angle Diversity i 1
I i( h)
Figure 6 gives a qualitative perspective of the phase
where Ii is the current vector of device i (in this case a
diversity of 5th harmonics. Unlike magnitude, the phase
particular inverter), h the order of harmonic and n the
angle of the current harmonics does not vary largely under
number of devices (in this case inverters). The diversity
the changing voltage harmonics during switching period.
factor directly presents, how much the absolute value of
Therefore a weak phase cancellation effect is expected.
the vector sum is smaller than the algebraic sum. The
0.99
value ranges from 0 ≤ k p( h ) ≤ 1, where k p( h ) = 0 means
0.98 perfect cancellation and k p( h ) = 1 no cancellation at all.
0.97
The diversity factor is evaluated for all considered
harmonics and the time when all inverters are connected.
Diversity Factor
0.96
0.95
The measurements at the individual inverters are simply
added algebraically and are divided by the corresponding
0.94
measurement value at the transformer. Figure 11 plots the
0.93 diversity factors for phase L1. Similar results are
0.92
observed for the other phases. With values higher than
0.9 all considered harmonics have a high diversity factor
0.91
5 7 9
Harmonic Order
11 13 and consequently a weak phase cancellation.
1.035
Summation Exponent
1.03
1.025
1.02
1.015
1.01
1.005
1
5 7 9 11 13
Harmonic Order
Fig. 13 Voltage spectrum at busbar in phase L1
Fig. 12 Summation Exponent for Current Harmonics