Flexible and reliable operation of a photovoltaic system through a back-to-back converter

Abstract

Paper presented to the 3rd Southern African Solar Energy Conference, South Africa, 11-13 May, 2015.

Photovoltaic systems, despite their 40 % annual growing over the 10 last years, have yet high initial installations costs. There are oversizing problems and storage difficulties inherent of isolated systems. For interconnected systems, the islanding is still the main challenge. This work proposes the use of a "backto- back" converter that allows the improvement of the sun's energy, especially in localities where the distribution network is intermittent. The proposed configuration enables the operation of photovoltaic systems in three different operation modes at the point of maximum power and a smooth transition between modes without the need of batteries for storage. Simulation results in PSCAD/EMTDC are presented to prove all the functionality of the proposed configuration.