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Corresponding Author

Dharmbir Prasad

Subject Area

Electrical Engineering

Article Type

Original Study

Abstract

Harmonic distortion, reactive power imbalance, and voltage instability represent major challenges regarding the power quality of grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Various recently developed flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) devices such as the unified power flow controller (UPFC) and distributed power flow controller (DPFC), however, have made them possible solutions but still do not provide a quantitative comparison in similar dynamic conditions. In this paper, comparative performance analysis of UPFC and DPFC in 3 MW grid connected solar PV system using Matlab Simulink is presented. The two controllers are affected by same disturbances, namely irradiance step change at t = 0.2 s and load increase at t = 0.3 s, as shown in results; DPFC can provide active power which is 7.7% higher (i.e., 0.42 MW vs 0.39 MW) than that of UPFC and reactive power is lower by 7.1%(i.e., 0.065 MVAR vs 0.070 MVAR). DPFC also reduces total harmonic distortion (THD) of the load current by 21.1% and voltage THD by 16.6%. The conventional PI-controlled DPFC offers limited but consistent THD reduction compared to the static synchronous compensators (STATCOMs) and optimized DPFC-fractional-order proportional-integral-derivative (FOPID) systems without sophisticated optimizations. DPFC employs an advanced structure based on distributed architecture and does not use DC link commonly used in FACTS devices, which offers remarkable operational flexibility, efficiency, and harmonic mitigation, thus proving to be a promising replacement for conventional transmission systems integrated with renewables

Keywords

Power compensation, reactive power, harmonic, power quality, DPFC, UPFC, solar PV, THD.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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