Cascaded Multilevel Inverter with Output Voltage Regulation Techniques to Reduce Harmonic Distortion and Power Quality Improvement in Solar Panel

Abstract

During the process of conversion of solar (photon) energy into electrical energy in the solar PV (photovoltaic) modules, harmonics will be generated in the system and consequently destructs the power quality.  The big picture behind this paper is to resolve the problem of harmonics in solar power plants comprised of multilevel cascaded inverters with the help of Proportional Integral (PI), Fuzzy logic (FL), Artificial Neural networks (ANN) and adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) based controllers.  The mentioned ANFIS based technique works towards reduction of harmonic distortion and therefore it achieves the improvement of power quality.  As a value addition to power quality enhancement, this paper demonstrates a solution in the aspect of regulating output voltage and frequency of inverter in synchronization with the grid (to which the solar power plant would deliver the generated power) parameters.  On the platform of MATLAB software various simulations for solar inverters (multilevel cascaded inverters) by integrating PI, FL, ANN and ANFIS based controllers. The above techniques are simulated and validated by measuring the improvement of power quality achieved as well as output voltage regulation.