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Grid-Fault Control Scheme for Three-Phase Photovoltaic Inverters With Adjustable Power Quality Characteristics
Miguel Castilla, Jaume Miret, Member, IEEE, Jorge Luis Sosa, Jos e Matas, and Luis Garc a de Vicu na
AbstractThe power quality of a three-phase photovoltaic (PV) inverter drastically deteriorates in the presence of grid faults with unbalanced voltages. A ripple in the injected power and an increase in the current harmonic distortion are the main noticeable adverse effects produced by this abnormal grid situation. Several grid-fault control schemes are nowadays available for operating under unbalanced grid voltage. These control schemes usually have extreme power quality characteristics. Some of them have been conceived to completely avoid power ripple during unbalanced voltage sags, but at an expense of high current harmonic distortion. With other schemes, the harmonic distortion is totally eliminated but at an expense of high ripple in the injected power. This paper further explores the performance of PV inverters under unbalanced voltage sags. It has three theoretical contributions: 1) a generalized control scheme, which includes the aforementioned grid-fault controllers as particular cases; 2) a control strategy based on the use of continuous values for the control parameters. This original approach gives adjustable power quality characteristics that cannot be achieved with the previous control schemes; 3) three different control algorithms for calculating the continuous values of the control parameters. These contributions are experimentally validated with a digital signal processor-based laboratory prototype. Index TermsDCAC power conversion, photovoltaic (PV) power systems, power quality.

I. INTRODUCTION

OWADAYS, distributed generation facilities are changing the present radial architecture of the electrical utility grid. Networked distribution systems with new potential operations in interactive closed loops are emerging to increase the efciency, safety and reliability of the modern utility grid. In this scenario, power-electronic-based microgrids have received increasing attention in low-voltage network applications [1][4]. Connected to the utility grid by power inverters, these microgrids are generally conceived as an autonomous cluster of paralleled distributed microgeneration systems operating in a common local area [5]. In addition to all inherited advantages of a single microgenera-

Manuscript received May 11, 2010; revised June 25, 2010 and August 12, 2010; accepted August 13, 2010. Date of current version December 27, 2010. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under Grant ENE2009-13998-C02-01. Recommended for publication by Associate Editor T.-L. Lee. M. Castilla, J. Miret, J. Matas, and L. G. de Vicu na are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, 08800 Vilanova i la Geltr u, Spain (e-mail: mcastilla@eel.upc.edu). J. L. Sosa is with the Scientic Instrumentation Laboratory, Universidad de los Andes, M erida 5101, Venezuela. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPEL.2010.2070081

tion system, power-electronic-interfaced microgrids have large power capacity and more control exibility in order to fulll system reliability and power quality requirements [6], [7]. However, microgrids are usually operating in grid-connected mode for injecting or absorbing power and, therefore, the power inverters forming the microgrid are continuously exposed to the abnormal conditions and disturbances existing in the utility grid [8]. The most severe cause of abnormal conditions in the utility grid is short-circuiting faults [9], [10]. Produced by some adverse meteorological conditions or by starting of large motors, these faults normally produce voltage sags, i.e., a reduction of the voltage magnitude followed by a voltage recovery after a short period of time. The frequency of voltage sags is between a few tens and one thousand events per year. Duration is mostly less than one second, and voltage drops rarely below 40%. Regardless of their characteristics, unbalanced voltage sags typically tend to deteriorate the performance of the power electronics converters connected to the utility grid directly or forming a microgrid. In particular, the reduction of the power quality caused by a ripple in the output power and an increase of the current harmonic distortion is the most signicant impact of unbalanced voltage sags [11], [12]. In order to overcome these drawbacks, different control schemes can be found in literature. A vector control approach was rst developed for avoiding output power oscillations in three-phase pulse-width-modulated rectiers [11][16]. Positive and negative components of the output current were separately controlled with a dual control scheme, in which the current references were accurately selected with the purpose of avoid the power oscillations. This idea was later successfully applied to other applications such as active power lters [17][19], static synchronous compensators [20][22], and grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) inverters [23], [24]. As it can be seen in [11][24], the vector control approach requires two reference frame transformation modules for voltage and current, two real-time sequence extraction algorithms also for voltage and current, and two synchronous current reference generation systems (one for each rotating sequence). Consequently, the vector control schemes are complex control systems [25], [26]. As an alternative, grid-fault control schemes implemented in the stationary reference frame have also been presented for operating under unbalanced voltage sags [25][28]. In this case, the output currents are transformed into stationary reference frame resulting in sinusoidal control variables. Due to the known drawback of PI compensators in failing to remove steady-state errors when controlling sinusoidal waveforms, scalar control

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as a nonideal generator that takes into account the effect of imbalance in the transmission network. The generator provides voltages with both positive and negative sequence components (in normal operation, only voltage components with positive sequence are supplied). As a consequence, the voltage at the output of the power inverter can be expressed as v = v+ + v
Fig. 1. Diagram of the grid-side PV system.

(1)

schemes normally make use of novel proportional-resonant compensators for current regulation [27]. These studies also introduce several strategies for setting the current references in order to achieve a exible PV inverter operation during voltage sags. In fact, with these strategies, the power quality of the PV inverter can be dened in advance. In fact, some of them are conceived to completely avoid power oscillations during voltage sags, but at an expense of high current harmonic distortion. Other control strategies are designed to totally eliminate the current harmonic distortion but a high ripple in the injected power is clearly noticed in these cases [28]. As a consequence, using these control schemes, PV inverters exhibit only extreme power quality characteristics. The purpose of this study is to further explore the performance of PV inverters operating under unbalanced voltage sags. In particular, the paper presents a control scheme, which is formulated as a generalization of the scalar controllers reported in [25][28]. With our proposed control, the operation and performance of the PV inverter operating under voltage sags can be programmed by setting the values of two continuous control parameters. Consequently, power quality characteristics such as power ripple and harmonic distortion can be nely adjusted in comparison with the previously mentioned scalar strategies for which these two control parameters can only take discrete values. Besides three control algorithms for calculating the value of the continuous control parameters according to some specications in terms of power ripple and harmonic distortion are also developed. The paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the system model including the voltage sag characterization. Section III reviews the grid-fault control schemes intended for operating under voltage sags. Section IV formulates the proposed control scheme, introduces a control strategy based on continuous values for the control parameters and proposes three algorithms for setting the value of these control parameters. Section V presents selected experimental results from a digitally controlled laboratory prototype. Section VI discusses the current and future practical application of the proposed control scheme. Section VII gives the conclusion. II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION AND VOLTAGE SAG CHARACTERIZATION Fig. 1 shows the diagram of the grid-connected PV system considered in this study. It includes a three-phase power inverter, a grid-side control block and a distribution transformer. The utility grid and a local load are also shown. The grid is modeled

where v+ and v are positive and negative sequence voltage components, respectively. Note that the PV source, the dc-dc converter (intended for voltage amplication and maximum power point tracking) [31], [32], and the dc-link capacitor are not shown in Fig. 1 given that this study mainly concentrates on the interconnection of the PV inverter with the utility grid. Voltage sags are completely characterized by the magnitude and phase of each phase voltage [9], [10]. Fig. 2 shows three representative examples, which are also used in the experimental test (section V) in order to evaluate the proposed control scheme. The rst example represents a phase-to-phase symmetrical grid fault in which two phase voltages preserve the nominal magnitude and present a symmetrical phase deviation of 13 . The second example corresponds to a single-phase-to-ground symmetrical fault. In this case, two phase voltages reduce their magnitude and have a symmetrical phase deviation of 17 . The third example represents a single-phase-to-ground asymmetrical grid fault. The reduction of the voltage magnitude is slightly different for each phase voltage and the phase deviation is not symmetrical (23 and 12 , respectively). In the next section, it is shown that the performance of a PV inverter operating under voltage sags depends on the unbalance factor n, dened as n= V V+ (2)

where V + and V are the magnitude of positive and negative sequence voltage components, respectively. Of course, the unbalance factor gives a partial characterization of the voltage sag; in fact, the three different voltage sags shown in Fig. 2 have the same value of n (i.e., n = 0.3), but they have different waveforms. However, this partial information is enough to analyze the PV inverter characteristics, as seen in the following section. III. REVIEW OF GRID-FAULT CONTROL SCHEMES This section briey reviews the conguration and characteristics of the scalar control schemes intended for unbalanced voltage sags. The drawbacks of these schemes are also highlighted. A. Control Conguration Fig. 3 shows the diagram of the scalar grid-fault control schemes. Positive and negative sequences of the grid voltage are extracted using a sequence detection block. In this study, the sequence detection is carried out by the grid synchronization algorithm reported in [33]. Further details of this control algorithm can also be found in [34]. The reference current is generated with the reference generation block. This control element

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interconnecting PV systems with the utility grid [29], [30]. The switch pattern s is generated by the current regulator by processing the error between the reference current and the inverter output current. The reference current provided by the reference generation block can be expressed in terms of their positive i+ r and negative i r sequence components as
ir = i+ r + ir

(3)

Table I lists the reference current sequence components for the scalar grid-fault control schemes considered in this study. Additional information of these reference currents including derivation, physical interpretation and discussion can be found in [25][28]. B. Power Quality Characteristics The PV inverters equipped with the previous control strategies can be characterized under unbalanced voltage sags in terms of three power quality indexes: active power ripple, reactive power ripple, and total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output current. It is worth to mention that the same THD is observed at each phase current. As a consequence, the following index denitions will not make distinction between the phase currents p = pP P q q = P m ax (4)
m ax

(5) (6)

THD(i) =

2 2 irm s i1rm s i1rm s

where p = v i and q = |v i| are the instantaneous active and reactive power, respectively, i is a phase current (a, b or c), and irm s and i1rm s are the root-mean-square (rms) values of this phase current and its fundamental harmonic component, respectively, irm s = 1 T 1 T
T

i2 dt
0 T 2

(7) 1 T
T 2

i1rm s =

i sin tdt
0

i cos tdt
0

(8)

Fig. 2. Three representative cases of unbalanced voltage sags. (a) Symmetrical with 0 .6 0 , 1 107 , and 1 253 . (b) Symmetrical with 1 0 , 0 .68 137 , and 0 .68 223 . (c) Asymmetrical with 0 .9 0 , 0 .57 143 , and 0 .67 228 . At normal operation, the grid voltage is 1 0 , 1 120 , and 1 240 (magnitude voltage is in p.u. and phase voltage in degrees).

is the fundamental part of the control system. Essentially, the reference generator is responsible for programming the selected control strategy. Inputs for this block are positive and negative sequences of the grid voltage and the active power reference P. Note that reactive power injection is not considered in this application in accordance with the international standards for

T being the period of the phase current. The power quality indexes for the scalar grid-fault control schemes can be found by inserting (1)(3) and the reference currents given in Table I into (4)(8). Table II lists the results as a function of the unbalance factor n. Note that all control strategies have extreme characteristics. The instantaneous unity power factor control (IUPFC) strategy has no power ripple during the voltage sag but a signicant current THD is noticed (31.5% for n = 0.3). The IPSC reduces the current THD during the voltage sag (15.5% for n = 0.3), but at an expense of increasing the reactive power ripple (30% for n = 0.3). In the rest of control strategies, the current THD during the voltage sag is theoretically zero but power oscillations

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Fig. 3.

Diagram of the scalar grid-fault control schemes. TABLE I GRID-FAULT CONTROL SCHEMES: REFERENCE CURRENT DEFINITION

TABLE II GRID-FAULT CONTROL SCHEMES: POWER QUALITY CHARACTERISTICS

TABLE III DEFINITION OF THE DISCRETE CONTROL PARAMETERS AND

A. General Formulation The reference currents listed in Table I can be classied by the denition of two discrete control parameters, and , as shown in Table III. In view of this denition, a general formulation for the reference currents can be easily derived from Tables I and III with noticeable ripple are observed (from 30% to 55% for n = 0.3). i+ r = i r = P v+ |v+ |2 + (1 + ) v+ v + |v |2 P v . |v+ |2 + (1 + ) v+ v + |v |2 (9) (10)

IV. PROPOSED CONTROL SCHEME This section presents a grid-fault control scheme with adjustable power quality characteristics. Three algorithms for calculating the values of the control parameters are also presented.

Taking into consideration these expressions, the power quality indexes can also be generalized by inserting (1)(3), (9), and

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(10) into (4)(8), resulting in p = q = THD(i) = where N= 1 + (2 (1 + )2 2 )n2 + 2 n4 . (14) (1 + ) (1 ) n 1 (1 + ) n + n2 (1 ) n 1 + n2 (1 + )2 2 n2 1 2N (1 + n2 N ) (11) (12) (13)

It is worth mentioning that the considered power quality indexes provide information only during the unbalanced voltage sag (n > 0). In fact, these indexes can be viewed as additional unbalance grid measurements. B. Proposed Control Strategy The general reference current expressions (9) and (10) can be used with discrete values for and , as shown in Table III. The discrete values can be online changed in order to commute between the extreme power quality characteristics during the voltage sag. However, it is also possible to use continuous values for and in order to achieve intermediate power quality characteristics. These intermediate features are shown in Fig. 4 for an unbalance factor n = 0.3. As can be seen, assuming continuous values for and inside the range 1 < < 1 and 0 < < 1, not only ve set of power quality characteristics is possible (as marked with arrows in Fig. 4), but a wide range of power quality indexes with continuous values is also possible. For example, xing = 0 and varying continuously from 0 to 1, it is possible to reproduce the characteristics of the APSC and the IPSC strategies at = 0 and = 1 (i.e., initial and nal states) and also all the intermediate situations in which 0 < < 1. In this case, by increasing from 0 to 1, the active power ripple is reduced from its maximum to its minimum value, as shown in Fig. 4(a). Furthermore, the harmonic distortion during the voltage sag is increased from its minimum to its maximum value, as shown in Fig. 4(c). Note that the reactive power ripple is nearly constant in this case, as shown in Fig. 4(b). C. Algorithms for Calculating the Values of and Parameters The characteristics of the PV inverter can be programmed by varying the values of and parameters. In view of (11)(13), several algorithms to calculate the values for and can be devised. This section introduces three possibilities. Algorithm 1: The aim of this algorithm is to achieve predened active and reactive power ripples during the voltage sag, as shown in Fig. 5(a). From (11) and (12), the values of and parameters can be calculated as follows: = = n q n (1 + n q ) (1 + n2 ) p + (1 n2 ) q 2 n . (1 p) ((1 n2 ) q 2 n) (15) (16)
Fig. 4. Characteristics of the PV inverter under unbalance factor n = 0.3. (a) Active power ripple p (in p.u.). (b) Reactive power ripple q (in p.u.). (c) Current THD(i) (in percentage).

Note that, once the values of and are known, the THD during the voltage sag can be derived from (13) and (14). Algorithm 2: As shown in Fig. 5(b), the inputs of this algorithm are the desired THD and the reactive power ripple during the voltage sag. The values of and can be obtained from (12) and (13) = n q n (1 + n q ) (17)

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Fig. 5. Diagram of the control algorithms for calculating and values. (a) ALGO1. (b) ALGO2. (c) ALGO3.

1 + THD(i)2 2 (1 + n2 ) THD(i) . 2 (1 + n ) q + 2 n 1 + 2 THD(i)2

(18)

Note that, once the values of and are known, the active power ripple can be derived from (11). Algorithm 3: As shown in Fig. 5(c), the inputs of this algorithm are the desired THD and the active power ripple during the voltage sag. The values of and can be obtained from (11) and (13), as shown (19) and (20) at the bottom of this page. Note that, once the values of and are known, the reactive power ripple during the voltage sag can be derived from (12). It is worth mentioning that, for online operation, the measurement of the unbalance factor n is required in all three algorithms; see, for example, (19). This factor can be calculated using (2) and the information provided by the real-time sequence-detection algorithm (see Fig. 3). V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS This section veries experimentally the proposed control strategy. A complete set of measures including output current, active and reactive power, and THD is reported. A. Experimental Setup The grid-side PV system shown in Fig. 1 was built using a 4.5 kVA SEMIKRON three-phase inverter, a 10 kVA distribution transformer and a oating-point TMS320F28335 DSP control platform. A 3-kW resistive load was employed as local load. The grid was emulated by a Chroma 61704 programmable threephase ac power source in order to be able to create repetitive voltage sags. The experimental tests were carried out generating the voltage sags shown in Fig. 2.

The grid-fault control scheme shown in Fig. 3 was implemented in the DSP platform. The grid synchronization algorithm presented in [33] was used for the detection of positive and negative sequence components of the inverter output voltage. The parameters of the synchronization algorithm were designed following the procedure reported in [34]. The proposed control expressed in (9) and (10) was employed in order to generate the current references. The active power reference was set to P = 2 kW. The ALGO1, ALGO2, and ALGO3 algorithms were employed for the calculation of the continuous values for and parameters. The switch pattern s was generated by a PWM current controller implemented in the stationary reference frame [27]. Both the switching frequency and the sampling frequency were set at 15 kHz. The sensed output current and power were sent to the oating-point DSP. The high-frequency noise of these signals was removed by a low-pass lter with 5 kHz cut-off frequency. In that case, the low-frequency behavior can be clearly observed. Also, the experimental results can be directly compared with the theoretical ones. However, the measures of the current THD given below will be slightly lower than practical measures that do not neglect the high-frequency noise. B. Results and Discussion An extensive set of measures was carried out with xed values for and (before using ALGO1, ALGO2 and ALGO3 algorithms). The aim was to evaluate the theoretical analysis given in Section IV. As an example, Table IV lists the measures for = 0.5 and = 0.5. Note that a good agreement between theoretical and experimental results is obtained. Also, the power quality indexes practically coincide for the three voltage sags shown in Fig. 2. This point veries the partial characterization of voltage sags introduced in section II. The assumption of equal THD for each phase current is also conrmed with these results. Fig. 6 shows the output current and the instantaneous active and reactive power using the ALGO1 control algorithm. Four situations with different values for the power ripples are reported. In the rst case, the inputs of the algorithm are p = 0 and q = 0, resulting in = 1 and = 1. As can be seen in Table III, this situation corresponds to the IUPFC strategy. As expected, no steady-state double-frequency oscillations are observed in the active and reactive power during the voltage sag, as shown in Fig 6(a). This theoretical prediction was listed in Table II. The transient deviations of the instantaneous power at both the beginning and the end of the voltage sag are largely due to the behavior of the grid synchronization algorithm [33], [34]. The main limitation of this strategy is the high current THD during the voltage sag. A practical THD(i) = 34.0% was measured in this situation.

(n p)(1 + 2 THD(i)2 ) 2(1 p) THD(i) 1 + THD(i)2 1 n (1 + np)(1 + 2 THD(i)2 ) + 2n (1 p) THD(i) 1 + THD(i)2 2 THD(i) 1 + THD(i)2 1 + THD(i)2 p (1 + 2 THD(i)2 ) + 2(1 p) THD(i) .

(19)

(20)

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TABLE IV COMPARISON OF THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL POWER QUALITY INDEXES FOR = 0 .5 AND = 0 .5

Fig. 6. Experimental response of the grid-connected PV inverter under the phase-to-phase grid fault shown in Fig. 2(a) when using the ALGO1 algorithm. (a) p = 0 and q = 0. (b) p = 0.3 and q = 0.3. (c) p = 0.1 and q = 0.1. (d) p = 0.2 and q = 0.2.

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Fig. 7. Experimental response of the grid-connected PV inverter under the single-phase-to-ground fault shown in Fig. 2(b) when using the ALGO2 algorithm. (a) q = 0.3 and THD(i) = 2.5%. (b) q = 0.3 and THD(i) = 5%. (c) q = 0.3 and THD(i) = 7.5%. (d) q = 0.3 and THD(i) = 10%.

In the second case, the inputs of the ALGO1 algorithm are p = 0.3 and q = 0.3, resulting in = 0 and = 0. This situation corresponds to the APSC strategy. As expected, the double-frequency oscillations in active and reactive power have an amplitude of 30% (see Table II). Note that the base power is the active power reference P. Moreover, no harmonic distortion is noticed in the output current during the voltage sag. Fig. 6(b) corroborates these theoretical predictions. Both IUPFC and APSC strategies have extreme features. Intermediate solutions can be programmed by setting the inputs of the ALGO1 algorithm between the ranges 0 < p < n 0 < q < n. (21) (22)

In fact, there are unlimited combinations of p and q inside these ranges, thus giving the opportunity to choice between intermediate power quality characteristics. Two examples are shown in Fig. 6(c) and (d). The inputs of the ALGO1 algorithm for the rst example was set to p = 0.1 and q = 0.1, resulting in = 0.65 and = 0.87. In this case, the power ripple was 10% and the measured THD(i) was 23.1%. In the second example, p = 0.2 and q = 0.2, and the algorithm outputs were = 0.31 and = 0.60. The practical power ripple was 20% and the measured THD(i) was 12.1%. Fig. 7 shows the output current and the injected power using the ALGO2 control algorithm. In this experiment, intermediate results between APSC and IPSC strategies were programmed (see Table II). In fact, the q input was xed at the constant value 0.3 and the THD(i) input was varied from 2.5% to 10% in

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TABLE V COMPARISON OF THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR THE ALGO3 ALGORITHM

order to achieve intermediate values for the active power ripple inside the range given by (19). As can be seen in Fig. 7, the steady-state active power during the voltage sag has doublefrequency oscillations with decreasing amplitudes as the THD(i) input increases. Therefore, the active power ripple can be programmed between the extreme characteristics given by the APSC and IPSC strategies by setting the desired value of the THD(i) during the voltage sag. Table V compares theoretical and experimental results using the ALGO3 control algorithm. These results were obtained under the phase-to-phase grid fault shown in Fig. 2(a). The experiment started programming the PNSCC strategy by setting the inputs of the ALGO3 algorithm (i.e., the theoretical values for THD(i) and p) equal to zero. Next, the inputs were increased in order to reduce the reactive power ripple q. Note that good agreement between the theoretical and experimental results is obtained. Also, it is interesting to note that a ne adjustment of both the current THD and the active power ripple is possible with the use of the ALGO3 algorithm. VI. PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THE PROPOSED CONTROL SCHEME This section discusses some practical issues regarding the application of the proposed control scheme. Also, some additional properties of this control scheme are highlighted. A. Limits on and Values The power quality of the grid-faulty PV inverter can be dened in advance by using the control algorithms presented in Section IV-C. The best power quality results are obtained when the outputs of these algorithms are limited by the range 1 1 0 1. (23) (24)

(15) to (20) should be saturated by the limits given in (23) and (24). B. Robustness to Grid Voltage Harmonics The derivation of the proposed control scheme is based on the assumption that the utility grid suffers unbalanced voltage sags. In this case, the theoretical current THD prediction given by (13) only considers the unbalance effects. In a practical situation, the utility grid also contains some voltage harmonics, which usually increase the current THD in a conventional control scheme [27]. However, the proposed control scheme exhibits a high robustness against grid voltage harmonics. This promising property is attributed to the sequence-detection algorithm that behaves as a bandpass lter with low bandwidth [33]. Therefore, both the positive and negative sequences of the grid voltage and the reference current are virtually free of harmonic components. The result is that the current THD is nearly insensitive to the grid voltage harmonics. Some experiments were carried out to validate this statement. In particular, the experimental results shown in Table IV were collected again but programming the ac power source with different voltage THD values (from 0% to 10%). The worse case in the measured current THD(i) was a deviation from 11.5% (voltage THD = 0%) to 12.3% (voltage THD = 10%). The increase of the current THD is given by the residual voltage harmonics that can not be completely eliminated by the bandpass lter. In any case, the increase in the current THD is small, and thus, the robustness of the proposed control scheme is conrmed. C. Stability and Transient Response The dynamic properties of the proposed control scheme are given mainly by the sequence-detection algorithm. As explain above, this algorithm is responsible for extracting the positive and negative sequences of the grid voltage. It behaves as a second-order bandpass lter tuned to resonate at the estimated frequency of the utility grid [33]. Stability and transient response analysis of the sequence-detection algorithm is reported in [34]. Following this analysis, the parameters of the detection algorithm used in this study were designed. As experimentally conrmed in Section V, the grid-faulty PV inverter is stable and exhibits fast transient response. As an example, Fig. 6(a) clearly

In fact, the results shown in Fig. 4 have been evaluated again for values of and parameters out of this range and higher power quality indexes are obtained. This corroborates that the best power quality results correspond to this control parameter range. Thus, in a practical situation, the resulting values from

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shows a recovery time of 10 ms in the instantaneous active and reactive power. This value can be considered good enough for the current application [27]. D. Future Standards for Grid Interconnection Current international standards for grid interconnection provide considerations for the safe and proper operation of the grid-connected PV systems [29], [30]. According to these standards, the PV inverter should cease to energize the utility grid during some abnormal conditions, which are bounded by limits on voltage, frequency, and harmonics. The voltage conditions also species the tripping (or clearing) time as the time between the abnormal conditions occurring and the inverter ceasing to energize the electrical grid. It is worth to mention that no limits on power ripple are dened in the existing standards, even though this non ideal characteristic is normally noticeable during unbalanced voltage sags. In addition, the limits on current harmonics are applicable at steady-state operation, i.e., when the abnormal voltage condition has ceased. As a consequence, all grid-fault control schemes reviewed in Section III meet the current standards. As the installed power of PV plants grows, international standards with new and more stringent requirements should be applied to the grid-connected PV inverters. As an additional requirement, the ability to properly operate with specic limits on power ripple and current harmonics during unbalanced grid voltages is expected. This will reduce the potential adverse effects caused to other equipments connected to the utility grid. In that case, probably none of the control strategies reviewed in Section III will meet the specications because of its extreme power quality characteristics. As shown above, these control strategies have some ideal characteristics (no power ripple or no current distortion) but also a non ideal characteristic with maximum value (see Table II). Unlike these strategies, the proposed control has the capacity to adjust the power quality characteristics using two continuous control parameters. In fact, this exible control allows a certain deterioration of one of its features with the aim of improving the rest. It is expected, therefore, that this ability to balance the power quality characteristics will allow the accomplishment of the more stringent specications of future international standards. VII. CONCLUSION A grid-fault control scheme intended for three-phase PV inverters operating under unbalanced voltage sags has been presented in this paper. Previous scalar control schemes can be viewed as particular cases of the proposed controller by dening two discrete control parameters. This paper suggests the use of continuous values for these control parameters in order to achieve intermediate power quality characteristics (with discrete control parameters only extreme power quality characteristics are obtained). Three control algorithms for calculating the continuous values of the control parameters have been also presented. Selected results from a oating-point DSP-based laboratory PV system are reported. Several experimental tests have been carried out showing the characteristics of the proposed

control algorithms. It is expected that the exible operation given by the adjustable PV inverter characteristics will easily fulll future, more stringent international standards for grid interconnection. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers and associate editor for their valuable comments and suggestions. REFERENCES
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Jaume Miret (M98) received the B.S. degree in telecommunications, the M.S. degree in electronics, and the Ph.D. degree in electronics from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1992, 1999, and 2005, respectively. Since 1993, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, Vilanova i la Geltr u, Spain, where he teaches courses on digital design and circuit theory. His current research interests include dc-to-ac converters, active power lters, and digital control.

Jorge Luis Sosa received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Universidad de Los Andes, M erida, Venezuela, in 1993 and 1997, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 2007. Since 1999, he has been a Professor with the Scientic Instrumentation Laboratory, Universidad de los Andes, where he teaches courses in electronics. His current research interests are nonlinear control of power converters, uninterruptible power systems, and power electronics.

Jos e Matas received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in telecommunications engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1988, 1996, and 2003, respectively. From 1988 to 1990, he was an Engineer of a consumer electronics company. Since 1990, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, Vilanova i la Geltr u, Spain. His current research interests include power-factor-correction circuits, active power lters, uninterruptible power systems, distributed power systems, and nonlinear control.

Miguel Castilla received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in telecommunication engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1988, 1995, and 1998, respectively. Since 2002, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, Vilanova i la Geltr u, Spain, where he teaches courses on analog circuits and power electronics. His current research interests include power electronics, nonlinear control, and renewable energy systems.

received the Ingeniero de Luis Garc a de Vicuna Telecomunicaci on and Dr.Ing. degrees from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1980 and 1990, respectively, and the Dr.Sci. degree from the Universit e Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, in 1992. From 1980 to 1982, he was an Engineer with Control Applications Company. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, Vilanova i la Geltr u, Spain, where he teaches courses on power electronics. His current research interests include power electronics modeling, simulation and control, active power ltering, and high-power-factor ac/dc conversion.