A novel approach and analysis for PV firming using grid-tied three-port microinverter

Mahmood  Alharbi; Issa  Batarseh

Authors

Mahmood Alharbi Department of Electrical Engineering, Taibah University, Medina 42353, Saudi Arabia
Issa Batarseh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, United States

Keywords:

dynamic algorithm, DC/DC converter, DC/AC inverter, energy storage, PV firming, three-port microinverter

Abstract

With the demand increase for electricity, the ever-increasing awareness of environmental issues, coupled with rolling blackouts, the role of renewable energy generation will become even more significant. In this paper, a novel strategy is proposed that can harvest stable solar power despite of intermittency in solar irradiance, where a panel-level three-port grid-tied PV microinverter system is used instead of the traditional high-power energy storage and management system at the utility scale to implement PV firming. The microinverter system is composed of a front-end flyback converter and an H-bridge for inverter/rectifier, with battery stack connected to the DC-link. The proposed PV firming strategy lies in static and dynamic algorithms to generate smooth PV reference power, and the outcomes are implemented then to various control methods to charge/discharge the battery stack so that a stable power generation profile is obtained. Further, topology, simulation and experimental results are presente. Real-time PV intermittency and usable capacity data were discussed and analyzed in MATLAB/SIMULINK to validate the PV firming control. The experimental results verify the proposed PV firming algorithms.

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