Power Quality Improvement Utilizing Photovoltaic Generation Connected to a Weak Grid

Microgrid research and development in the past
decades have been one of the most popular topics. Similarly, the
photovoltaic generation has been surging among renewable
generation in the past few years, thanks to the availability,
affordability, technology maturity of the PV panels and the PV
inverter in the general market. Unfortunately, quite often, the PV
installations are connected to weak grids and may have been
considered as the culprit of poor power quality affecting other
loads in particular sensitive loads connected to the same point of
common coupling (PCC). This paper is intended to demystify the
renewable generation, and turns the negative perception into
positive revelation of the superiority of PV generation to the power
quality improvement in a microgrid system. The main objective of
this work is to develop a control method for the PV inverter so that
the power quality at the PCC will be improved under various
disturbances. The method is to control the reactive current based
on utilizing the grid current to counteract the negative impact of
the disturbances. The proposed control method is verified in PSIM
platform. Promising results have been obtained