2017 Ninth Annual IEEE Green Technologies Conference

Control of Grid Connected PV Array using P&O MPPT Algorithm 

Muhammad Ibrahim Munir Tasneim Aldhanhani Khalifa Hasan Al Hosani

Member, IEEE Member, IEEE Member, IEEE
The Petroleum Institute, UAE The Petroleum Institute, UAE The Petroleum Institute, UAE
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]



Abstract -- The renewable energy is becoming more ways to increase the share of renewable energy is to invest in
mainstream and accessible. This has been made possible due to solar energy. Solar energy is considered as the most popular
an increase in environmental awareness coupled with the source of renewable energy because of its round the clock
popular demand to cut back on the greenhouse emissions. We in availability during the day, easy commissioning, decreasing
this project propose a grid connected PV system. The aim of the costs and increasing efficiency. The output power produced
project is to implement a complete distributed energy resource
system (DER). The project will feature a PV module, which will
by the photovoltaic modules is intermittent in nature and
be controlled and optimized by means of a maximum power depends on the intensity of solar radiation and temperature of
point tracking (MPPT) algorithm. A boost converter along with solar cells [1]. As the efficiency of the commercially
a single phase grid tie inverter will be used to increase the available solar cells is low, it is important to track the
output voltage and to convert it to AC. A phase locked loop maximum power point. For this purpose different algorithms
circuit will be used to integrate the single phase inverter with employing MPPT are used. Using MPPT not only ensures
the grid. A control methodology consisting of PI controllers is that the output voltage of the PV is regulated, but also
employed for operating the PV at the MPPT point by ensures that the PV is operated at the maximum power point.
controlling the switching of the boost converter and also for the Different MPPT methods have been presented in literature
operation of the single phase inverter and its integration with
[2], [3], [4], [5]. In this paper we implement the Perturb &
the grid. The parameters of these controllers are tuned to give
the best results. This will be followed by a detailed mathematical Observe (P&O) algorithm for the MPPT in which the voltage
and engineering analysis for the simulated results. The validity is slightly perturbed in the direction of the increasing power
of the proposed scheme will be verified by simulation using the to find the MPPT point. A Dc-Dc boost converter not only
PSIM software. increases the input voltage, but also ensures that the PV is
operated at the MPPT point which is achieved by controlling
Index Terms-- Boost converter; Maximum power point the switching of the boost converter afterwards a single phase
tracking system (MPPT); Perturb and Observe algorithm grid tied inverter is used to convert the DC input into AC.
(P&O); Phase Locked Loop (PLL); Photovoltaic (PV) We also employ a low pass filter in order to remove the high
system; PSIM. frequency harmonics which are an impediment to our grid
integration. The Grid integration with the PV module is
I. INTRODUCTION achieved by implementing a Phase Locked Loop circuit. All
of these converters and circuits require a significant degree of
Several countries have vowed to reduce their carbon control and tuning to serve their intended purpose for this
footprint for which the necessary legislation is already case PI controllers are used and are accordingly properly
underway amongst several developed and developing tuned to give the best results.
countries. The use of renewable resources to power load and
the integration of such resources with the conventional grid II. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
infrastructure is becoming an increasingly popular alternative
to the conventional employed power plants which primarily The configuration of the grid connected PV is shown in
run on fossil fuels and thus leave a major carbon footprint Fig. 1 in which the PV is connected to the DC-DC converter
which is harmful to the ecology of the environment. As the which will work to control dc output from unregulated dc
countries have already started to take an action toward input by adjusting duty cycle. The DC-DC boost converter is
addressing the threats to overcome the climate change and controlled using PWM which is done by varying the duty
energy crisis, the share of clean energy has seen an upward cycle for the boost converting this duty cycle is generated by
surge in recent years. Many of the countries have come up the P&O MPPT algorithm. A single phase inverter will then
with a strategic plan suitable to their needs to cut down their be used to convert photovoltaic DC voltage into line
carbon footprint and to overcome their energy needs by frequency AC voltage. A Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation
innovative, creative and sustainable solutions. One of the (SPWM) switching control is designed to control the inverter
[6]. The switching frequency of the boost converter and the

2166-5478/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE 52

DOI 10.1109/GreenTech.2017.14
grid tie single phase PWM converter is chosen to be 30 kHz.
The employed scheme also ensures that the DC-link voltage
remains stable without varying rapidly thus ensuring a
smooth system operation. A Phase Locked Loop (PLL) was
also designed to synchronize the inverter with the grid
voltage. Finally L filter was connected between the inverter
and the grid to fulfill the standard specifications of current
harmonics injected to the grid [7]. The inductor offers high
impedance to high frequency signals and low impedance to
low frequency signals, therefore its series connection
suppresses the AC ripples making it act as a low pass filter.

Fig. 2. PV & IV Characteristics of the PV panel

Fig. 1. Block diagram of grid-connected PV farm.
B. DC-DC Boost Converter
III. SYSTEM MODELING The boost converter as shown in Fig. 3 is one of the most
essential component of the system as it controls the dc output
A. PV from the unregulated dc input by adjusting its duty cycle. The
The PV array was modeled in PSIM using six identical converter ensures that our system`s output voltage will be
solar Solarex MSX-60 PV panels which were connected in higher than Dc-Dc converter`s input voltage. The structure of
series to form a solar array. The parameters used for boost converter consists of a combination of an inductor and
modeling the array are shown in Table 1. The characteristics a capacitor, when converter`s switch is open the voltage sum
of PV module are shown in Fig. 2, in which the relationship across these elements gives the converter`s boost voltage [8].
between the electrical power, voltage and current is The duty cycle of the converter is given by equation 1 [1].
illustrated by constructing the PV and IV curves of the solar Using this expression the desired output voltage can be
array. The simulations were performed at a constant obtained by adjusting the converter`s duty cycle
temperature of 25 °C at two different irradiation values of
v
800 W/m2 and 1000W/m2 to observe the MPPT response of D 1  in (1)
the system when responding to a change in the irradiation v out
which has a direct impact on the power generated by the solar where D is the duty cycle; vin is the input voltage; and vout is
module.
Table 1: Solar Module Parameters the output voltage.

Specification Value

Number of Cell (Ns) 216

Maximum Power (Pmax ) 360 W

Voltage at Pmax 102.6 V

Current at Pmax 3.5 A

Fig. 3. Boost Converter
Open-Circuit Voltage (VOC ) 126.6 V
C. Single Phase Inverter
Short-Circuit Current (ISC ) 3.8 A

Temperature coeff. of VOC -0.38 % The single phase DC-AC inverter is a power electronics
device which converts low voltage direct current (DC) into
Temperature coeff. of ISC 0.065 % the standard alternating current (AC) for AC loads i.e. 120
/240 V AC, 50/ 60 Hz. For system stability it is essential that

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the inverter produces power of a similar quality to that of the
main electricity grid. Inverters can be widely classified, one
of these classifications is based on the arrangement of the
power electronic switches i.e. – Half Bridge Inverter and Full
bridge inverter. In this paper the full H-bridge single phase
inverter will be used. This topology consists of power Fig. 5. Phase Locked Loop Conventional Structure
electronic switches which are fed with constant amplitude
pulses of varying duty cycle for each period. The SPWM IV. SYSTEM CONTROL
pulses are generated by comparison of two waves- a carrier
wave, which is a triangular wave and a modulating reference A. MPPT control of boost converter
sinusoidal wave. Single phase inverter is characterized by a
simple circuitry and a rugged control scheme which employs Current–voltage (I–V) characteristic of a PV depends on
the conventional SPWM technique in order to obtain inverter the intensity of the irradiation & the temperature.
output voltage control as well as to reduce its harmonic Temperature influences the PV output voltage while solar
content [9]. irradiance affects PV output current. There is a maximum
power point (MPP), at which the array operates with the
Fig. 4 shows the structure of the single phase inverter, in highest efficiency. Based on the impedance matching
which it will operate as follow: principle the power output of a circuit is maximum when the
source impedance matches with the load impedance. The
x When S1 and S2 are turned on +VAB is obtained at the MPPT algorithms does this impedance matching by adjusting
output the duty factor D of the DC-DC converter. The input and
x When S3 and S4 are turned on –V AB is obtained at output impedances are related by the following expression
the output
x When S1 and S3 or S2 and S4 are turned on together,
zero voltage is obtained at the output Rin (1  D 2) R load (2)

D. Phase Locked Loop (PLL) Where D is the duty cycle; Rin is the PV impedance; and Rload
is the load impedance
A conventional phase locked loop as shown in Fig. 5
consists of three primary units namely phase (error) detection In this paper we use the P&O algorithm for MPPT. The
unit (PD), a loop filter and a voltage controlled oscillator principle of this approach is that it will perturb the reference
(VCO) [10]. The phase detector measures the phase voltage by observing the system response to determine the
difference between the input and the output signal. The direction of the next perturbation. The reference voltage
obtained phase error then passes through the loop filter which perturbations are performed in the direction in which the
extracts the DC component from the phase error. This power should increase. Fig. 6 shows the P&O principle.
obtained DC component is then amplified and passed onto
the VCO which consists of a PI controller which generates The control circuitry consists of two PI controllers which
the frequency of the output signal, which is onwards passed have an integral gain of 100 and a time constant of 0.1 tuned
through the integrator resulting in the phase angle of the by trial and error, the reference voltage is being fed into the
output signal, this phase angle is afterwards extracted from first PI controller, which is being employed for the voltage
the PLL loop and is used for the generation of the grid control and drives the PV system voltage towards the MPPT
current reference signal [12]. voltage. This is followed by another PI controller which acts
as a current controller and drives the system current towards
the MPPT current. The output of the control loops is fed to
the comparator which generates the PWM to drive the boost
converter ensuring that the system operates at the desired
maximum power point. Fig. 7 shows the control block
diagram for the boost converter.
B. Phase Locked Loop for single phase system

The Phase Locked Loop (PLL) control subsystem is one of

the essential component of grid connected inverters as it
plays a key role in synchronizing the inverter with the grid`s
voltage, frequency and phase angle.

The structure of the PLL used in this paper is shown in Fig.

Fig. 4. Single Phase Inverter 8. The input signal to the PLL is a unit sinusoidal voltage

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waveform denoted as Asin (și) where A denotes a unit value.
The voltage error, Verr is written as

v err A sin(T i ) cos(T e)  sin(T e) cos(T e) (3)

Here și is the input phase angle & șe is the estimated phase

angle. It can be noticed from (3) that when the estimated
phase angle tracks the actual one (șe ؆ și) at unity amplitude
in per unit the Verr approaches zero, this is known as the
Fig. 8. Modified PLL Structure
frequency/phase locked condition. Moreover, the PLL system
can still work well even if the amplitude is not equal to 1[11]. C. Control scheme of single-phase grid-tie inverter
The PI controller employed for the PLL has been tuned using
trial & error for an integral gain of 80 and a time constant of A grid-tie inverter is a power inverter which converts
0.1. direct current (DC) electricity into alternating current (AC)
and has the ability to synchronize and interface with the
utility grid. Its primary application involves converting DC
sources such as solar panels and integrating AC sources
such as small wind turbines with utility lines.

The inverter used in our application delivers the power

from the PV to the grid via the boost converter, where the
dc link voltage ensures that there are no power losses. The
process involves extracting the fundamental component of
the line voltage and feeding it to the phase locked loop,
which detects and outputs the phase angle șe. The sine of
the angle șe is multiplied with the amplitude of the grid
current I*amp this gives us the reference grid current Ig*. The
amplitude of the grid current depends on the reference
power P*t which corresponds to the power which we get
from the employed P&O MPPT control scheme. This grid
current amplitude is calculated by
2 p *t
* (4)
I amp
E mag
Emag here is the fundamental component of the grid
voltage, which in our case is rated to be 110 V. Now that
we have șe and grid current amplitude I*amp the grid current
Fig. 6. Mechanism of P&O algorithm reference is given by 

* *
I g I amp sin(T e) (5)

A PI regulator is employed for the grid current control,

with Ig* providing the reference current and the grid current
being fed into the PI controller by means of the feedback
loop. The output of the controller acts as the reference
signal. This reference signal is compared with the
triangular wave rated at 1V peak to peak and 30,000 Hz to
generate the PWM which drives the grid tied single phase
inverter. The control diagram for the single phase inverter
is shown in Fig.9.

The PI controller employed for the single-phase grid-tie

inverter has been tuned using trial & error for an integral
Fig. 7. Control block diagram boost converter gain of 120 and a time constant of 0.1.

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 temperature. Fig. 13 shows the output of the boost converter
and we can see that the boost circuit successfully increased
the input voltage from 100 V that is the output of the PV
array to 155 V. Fig. 14 (a) presents the rated grid voltage
which is rated at 110V and 60 Hz, Fig. 14 (b) corresponds to
the 2ʌf output of the PI controller in the phase locked loop
and Fig. 14 (c) shows the frequency output which after an
initial transient settles down at a steady state value of 60 Hz.
Fig. 15 shows the output of the phase locked loop angle șe in
blue which is the phase angle and will be used for the
computation of the reference grid current. From the figure we
can see that the phase angle perfectly tracks the unit
sinusoidal input which is shown in red. Fig. 16 (a) shows the
output voltage of single-phase grid-tie inverter and Fig. 16
(b) shows the corresponding grid current which gives a
Fig. 9. Control diagram of single-phase PWM converter
perfect sinusoid, this shows that the PV system has been
successfully integrated with the grid which is rated at 110 V
& 60 Hz. Fig. 17 shows the circuit diagram for the full
V. SIMULATION RESULT
system which has been implemented in PSIM showing the
The PSIM simulation for the 360 W solar PV system was PV module, Dc-Dc boost converter, P&O MPTT algorithm,
carried out in order to verify the validity of the system and single phase grid tie inverter and the employed control
the employed control schemes. The system parameters used schemes for the MPPT control via Dc-Dc boost converter,
for performing the simulations are listed in Table 2. The single phase inverter & the phase locked loop (PLL) for
system control was optimized by configuring the controller synchronizing the single phase inverter with the Gird.
parameters and by employing the P&O MPPT scheme.

Table 2. SYSTEM PARAMETERS (SIMULATION)

No. Parameters Value

Power of PV system (including 6 solar panels

1 360 Wp
60Wp)

2 PV array Output Voltage 100 V Dc

3 Output voltage of Boost converter 150 V Dc

4 Output Voltage of Single Phase Inverter 150 V Ac

5 Switching frequency of the converters fs 30,000 Hz

6 PV array Capacitor C in 60 uF

7 Boost Inductor L boost 3.5m

8 DC Link Capacitor 600 uF

9 L filter 5m

110 V, 60 Fig. 10. (a) PV array voltage (b) PV array current

10 Grid rating
Hz

Fig. 10 shows the transient and steady state response of the

voltage and current output of the PV array, from the results
we can see that the output voltage of the PV panel settles
down at 100 V while the current value changes depending on
the irradiation. Fig. 11 corresponds to the irradiation values
used in the simulations i.e. 800 W/m2 and 1000 W/m2. Fig.
12 shows maximum output of the PV array in blue and
corresponding MPPT response of our system in red which
shows that MPPT algorithm has been successfully
implemented and precisely follows the maximum output
Fig. 11. Irradiation (W/m2)
power of the PV array for the given irradiation values &

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Fig. 12. Maximum PV array power (blue) & the MPPT response (red)

Fig. 14. (c) Desired Frequency

Fig. 13. Boost converter Output Voltage (red) (b) Boost converter Input
Voltage (blue)

Fig. 15. Phase angle (blue) successfully tracking the Sinusoidal unit input

Fig. 14. (a) Grid Voltage, (b) 2ʌf Frequency (Hz) of output signal in PLL Fig. 16. (a) Inverter Output Voltage (b) Grid Current

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 Fig. 17. PSIM Simulation Grid connected PV system
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VI. CONCLUSION Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Inverter for Residential Application with
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A grid connected PV system was successfully Informatics, Electronics and Vision (ICIEV) , 2013, pp. 1-6.
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[7] Paukner, F. L., et al. "Dynamic behavior of the PV Grid-connected
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perfect sinusoid for the grid current. The system was also Electronics Conference and 1st Southern Power Electronics Conference
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[8] Akashdeep Sarkar, Bhagabat Panda and Dr.P.K Hota Babita Panda, "A
P&O based MPPT algorithm. Control schemes were Comparative Study of PI and Fuzzy Controllers for Solar powered DC-
applied for the single phase inverter, boost converter and DC Boost Converter," in International Conference on Computational
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[9] Anuja Namboodiri and Harshal S. Wani, "Unipolar and Bipolar PWM
controlling the duty cycle for the boost converter. The Inverter," International Journal for Innovative Research in Science &
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"Phase-Locked Loop Noise Reduction via Phase Detector
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