Modeling and Simulation of a Grid-Tied 21.
0 kWp
Real Solar Power Plant as Case Study, Using the
VHDL-AMS Language
Frank Alberto Ibarra Hernández John Edwin Candelo Becerra
School of Sciences and Engineering Department of Electric Energy and Automatic
Universidad del Sinú – Elías Bechara Zainúm Universidad Nacional de Colombia -
Montería, Colombia Medellín
frankibarra@unisinu.edu.co Medellín, Colombia
jecandelob@unal.edu.co
Abstract— This paper presents the utilization of hardware
description language VHDL-AMS (Very High-Speed Integrated
Circuit plus Hardware Description Language that includes
analog and mixed-signal extensions) for modeling and simulation
a grid-tied 21.0 kWp real solar power plant, admitted as case
study. The case study used in this research consists of a
photovoltaic power system with the following features: 1) It has
90 panels of 255 Wp and 3 SMA On Grid inverters, 2) It operates
without batteries, and 3) It has a dynamic power controller,
called Circuitor (CDP-0), to guarantee zero injection into the
grid. The main contribution of this work is modeling and
simulation of a grid-tied real solar power plant, using the VHDL-
AMS language (with the support of software SystemVision™), in
order to develop a simulating tool capable to find the real
electrical energy generation in a photovoltaic system, considering
the monthly averaged direct normal radiation and the solar
panel characteristics. This paper aims to present the first major
developments for the future construction of a bigger VHDL-AMS
tool that will allow the simulation of photovoltaic power systems,
operating in a synergic way with hydroelectric power plants
previously built, with the aim of optimize the coordinated
operation between hydropower and solar energy, for periods of
rain and hydrological drought.
Keywords— Hardware description languages, Photovoltaic
systems, Solar Power Plant, VHDL-AMS Language
I. INTRODUCTION
The software commonly used for load flow and fault
analysis of an electrical system often has no capability for user-
defined models. Such models could become necessary, with
the recent widespread penetration on the electrical systems of
distributed alternative generator resources (e.g. solar panels),
new rotating machine types and modern power electronics
devices. In this context, the software developer must
implement a new amount of models for the final user, who may
not then use the models to someone using different software
[1]. On the other hand, in [2], the VHDL-AMS language was
selected as the best available hardware description language.
Even though in this paper VHDL-AMS is used for designing
analog electric circuits (modeling and simulation), this
hardware description language can be used to describe other
978-1-5386-8464-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Javier Guerrero
School of Electrical Engineering & Computer
Science
Washington State University
Bremerton, USA
j.guerrerosedeno@wsu.edu
system types. The VHDL-AMS also provides different
domains such as electrical, physical and thermal, which they
can be described and simulated in a single entity [1]. Thus,
VHDL-AMS totally meets the application requirements in this
research. Therefore, for these reasons, it was proposed the use
of the VHDL-AMS in this work.
Contribution of this paper is a modeling and simulation of a
grid-tied real solar power plant, using the VHDL-AMS
language, in order to develop a simulating tool capable to find
the real electrical energy generation in a photovoltaic system,
considering the monthly averaged direct normal radiation and
the solar panel characteristics. The remaining paper is
organized as follows: In Section II, VHDL-AMS modeling
language is introduced; Section III illustrates the grid-tied 21.0
kWp real solar power plant, used in this research as case study;
Section IV presents the VHDL-AMS modeling and simulation
for the description of the mentioned real solar system. Finally,
Section V concludes the paper and proposes the future works.
II. VHDL-AMS MODELING LANGUAGE
In summary, VHDL-AMS is required to be a superset of
VHDL 1076-1993 (VHDL: Very High-speed integrated circuit
plus Hardware Description Language), supporting the
hierarchical description and simulation of continuous and
mixed-continuous/discrete system with conservative and non-
conservative semantics, and high-level synthesis [3].
According to [4], the SystemVision™ platform (provided
by the Mentor Graphics company), besides having a complete
library for describing structural models (in electrical, physical,
and thermal domains), reduces the design time and therefore
the project cost for the structural descriptions generated in
VHDL-AMS environment. In other preceding work [5], it was
developed the basic models of electrical components described
in VHDL-AMS, for distribution electric systems. In [5] it was
used the standard IEEE 13 node test feeder to develop and test
all VHDL-AMS basic models of electric components (under
SystemVision™ platform), which were used in this manuscript
for modeling and simulating the case study in this work.
 III. A GRID-TIED 21.0 KWP REAL SOLAR POWER PLANT AS electricity injection to the electrical grid, from self-generating
CASE STUDY systems, the CDP-0 are responsible for regulating the
production of solar inverters in any photovoltaic energy system
In this research it was used a grid-tied 21.0 kWp real solar
with instantaneous self-consumption, in order to guarantee zero
power plant, installed on an office building of a company, in
injection into the grid.
Montería City (Colombia). The main characteristics of this real
solar power plant are: 1) It has 90 panels of 255 Wp and 3 The schematic circuit of the grid-tied 21.0 kWp real solar
SMA On Grid inverters, 2) It operates without batteries, and 3) power plant used in this research, as study case, is shown in
It has a dynamic power controller, called Circuitor (CDP-0), to Fig. 1. The dynamic power controller can be seen in Fig. 2.
guarantee zero injection into the grid.
In this work, the modeling and simulation of the real solar
All the solar plant measurements were obtained from the power plant were developed in an VHDL-AMS environment,
Circuitor (CDP-0), using a IP address into the company using the software SystemVision™.
intranet. Considering that in Colombia is not regulated yet the

C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6
+ + + + + +
R1 INVERTER INVERTER INVERTER
- - - - - - + No. 1 - + No. 2 - + No. 3 -

+ + + + + +
R2
- - - - - -

+ + + + + +
R3
L1 L2 N L1 L2 N L1 L2 N
- - - - - -

+ + + + + +
R4 NINETY (90) 255 Wp
SOLAR PANELS
- - - - - -

+ + + + + +
R5 INVERTER
- - - - - - F13 F14 F15 F16 F17 F18 OUTPUT
PROTECTION
+ + + + + (AC)
+
R6
- - - - - -
AC
COMBINER
+ + + + + +
BOX
R7
- - - - - -

+ + + + + +
R8
- - - - - -

+ + + + + +
PANELS
R9
OUTPUT
- - - - - - PROTECTION
(DC)
+ + + + + +
R10 F1 F3 F5 F7 F9 F11

- - - - - -
F2 F4 F6 F8 F10 F12
+ + + + + +
R11
- - - - - - THREE-PHASE INTERNAL BOARD

F19 F20 F21

+ + + + + + THREE-PHASE
TOTALIZER BREAKER
R12
- - - - - -
NEUTRAL
+ + + + + +
PHASE A
R13
- - - - - - PHASE B

+ + + + + + PHASE C
R14
- - - - - - DC
COMBINER
+ + + + + + BOX

R15
- - - - - -

ENERGY
MEASUREMENT / ELECTRICAL
SIMULATION SYSTEM
RESULTS (GRID)

Fig. 1. Grid-tied 21.0 kWp real solar power plant admitted as a case study.
 photovoltaic solar panel VHDL-AMS model, shown in Fig. 3,
is given by:

library ieee;
library edulib;
library svlib;
use ieee.std_logic_1164.all;
use ieee.electrical_systems.all;
use ieee.mechanical_systems.all;
use ieee.fluidic_systems.all;
use ieee.thermal_systems.all;
use ieee.radiant_systems.all;
use work.all;
library edulib;
use work.all;
entity PVSP is
Fig. 2. Dynamic power controller Circuitor (CDP-0).
end entity PVSP;
architecture arch_ PVSP of PVSP is
IV. VHDL-AMS MODELING AND SIMULATION FOR THE terminal \N1\: ELECTRICAL;
DESCRIPTION OF THE GRID-TIED 21.0 KWP REAL SOLAR terminal \N2\: ELECTRICAL;
POWER PLANT begin
D : entity EDULIB.DIODE(IDEAL)
Modeling is at the central part of any design process. This port map ( P => N1,
activity fundamentally consists in developing abstract N => N2);
descriptions of some physical reality in such a way that they Rd : entity EDULIB.RESISTOR(IDEAL)
are beneficial for the design process. Models may be used to generic map ( RES => 0.55)
corroborate characteristics of some part of the entire designed port map ( P1 => \N2\,
system, e.g., its functionality or its performance. Such models P2 => ELECTRICAL_REF );
are simulation models or executable models, that produce a
Rs : entity EDULIB.RESISTOR(IDEAL)
response when they are actioned by stimuli. Models may
generic map ( RES => RS)
describe the behavior and/or the structure of the designed
system at various levels of details, or levels of abstraction. port map ( P1 => \N1\,
Selecting the appropriate level is, on the other hand, a matter of P2 => ELECTRICAL_REF );
compromise between model accuracy and model performance, Ipv : entity EDULIB.I_SINE(IDEAL)
and also, a means to handle with system complexity [6]. generic map ( AMPLITUDE => Ipv,
FREQ => 60.0,
Simulation of electrical power systems is fundamentally a PHASE => 0.0 )
step-by- step numerical solution of the system's differential port map ( POS => \N1\,
equations [7]. NEG => ELECTRICAL_REF );
end architecture arch_PVSP;
Using the software SystemVision™ it is possible to model
and simulate any electric power system into a VHDL-AMS After modeling the photovoltaic solar panel, it was obtained
environment. For example, in Fig. 3 is shown the VHDL-AMS a voltage, current and power characterization, shown in Fig. 4.
modeled photovoltaic solar panel.
N1

D
N2 +
Ipv Vpv Rs
-
Rd

Fig. 3. VHDL-AMS modeled photovoltaic solar panel.

Besides the VHDL-AMS basic models of electric

Fig. 4. Modeled solar panel characterization.
components developed in [5], in this work the used
 Because of space reasons, in this paper is not written all the
code that represents the VHDL-AMS model of the grid-tied
21.0 kWp real solar power plant, but the main results of this
work can be seen in Fig. 5, which are derived from Table I.
Furthermore, the VHDL-AMS model incorporates the
monthly averaged direct normal radiation, which, according to
the NASA Surface meteorology and Solar Energy Web site, for
this Colombian region is equal to 164.17 W/m2 on March.
Measurements were made for 2 weeks on March of this
year, using the Circuitor device, and it was calculated an
average day from 6:00 to 18:00 hours, considering all solar
hours in this region. In Montería city the solar hours are from
6:00 to 18:00 hours, which means thirteen hours of solar
radiation.

Fig. 5. Photovoltaic solar plant energy, real measures vs. VHDL-AMS simulations.

V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

TABLE I. PHOTOVOLTAIC SOLAR PLANT ENERGY, REAL MEASURES
VS. VHDL-AMS CALCULATIONS (VALUES) In this paper was used the VHDL-AMS language for
modeling and simulating a grid-tied 21.0 kWp real solar power
Real
Hour
Measures
VHDL-AMS ERROR plant, admitted as case study.
6:00 423.0 429.9 1.63% From the results it is possible to conclude: 1) Although in
7:00 2,122.0 2,091.9 1.42% this work only it was considered the power electrical system
8:00 3,843.0 3,869.3 0.68% (without the control system), it was possible modeling and
9:00 5,700.0 5,758.6 1.03% simulating a real photovoltaic system using the VHDL-AMS
10:00 7,700.0 7,604.0 1.25%
language and 2) The comparative results obtained from
11:00 9,200.0 9,143.0 0.62%
photovoltaic solar plant real measures versus VHDL-AMS
12:00 9,900.0 10,066.6 1.68%
simulations are satisfactory. The gotten greatest error was
13:00 10,090.0 10,090.5 0.01%
14:00 9,217.0 9,041.0 1.91%
2.95% at 18:00 hours and the minimal error obtained was
15:00 6,843.0 6,951.8 1.59%
0.01% at 13:00 hours.
16:00 4,157.0 4,175.2 0.44% Finally, it should be informed that this paper is as part of
17:00 1,541.0 1,505.3 2.32% initial development for a bigger VHDL-AMS tool that will
18:00 305.0 314.0 2.95% allow the simulation of photovoltaic power systems operating
Total Energy in a synergic (or coordinated) way with hydroelectric power
71,041.0 71,041.0 0.00%
[Wh]
plants previously built, with the aim of optimize the
Maximum Error 2.95%
coordinated operation between hydropower and solar energy,
Average Error 1.35% for periods of rain and hydrological drought. Here, in the
Minimal Error 0.01% tropical zone of Colombia, typically when there is a lot of rain
there is not sun radiation and the temperature is high (30
Celsius degree), and when there is a lot of sun radiation there is
not rain and the temperature is higher (35 or 38 Celsius
degree).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Universidad del
Sinú – Elías Bechara Zainúm for financial support to carry out
this research. Thanks to Universidad Nacional (Medellín) and
Washington State University also for supporting some of the
work reported in this paper.
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