PV inverter control using a TMS320F2812 DSP

Tamás Kerekes, Dezső Séra, Remus Teodorescu

tak@iet.aau.dk; des@iet.aau.dk; ret@iet.auc.dk;
Institute of Energy Technology; Aalborg University
Pontoppidanstraede 101
DK-9220, Aalborg, Denmark

1.1 Introduction
This paper presents the implementation of a control system of an
inverter for grid connected photovoltaic (PV) applications, using a
low cost TMS320F2812 eZdsp board. The implemented control
system contains a P+Resonant current controller, a Maximum
Power Point Tracker (MPPT) to optimize the power extraction
It is implemented using the delta operator [2], which gives better
performance for 16 bit variables than the shift based
implementation. The tested MPPT methods are the Perturb &
Observe (P&O) and Incremental Conductance (INC) algorithms.
The Simulink model of the control scheme is presented below:
round(75e6/8192/2)

from the PV panel, and a Phase Lock Loop (PLL) for grid [Ugin] Ug

synchronization. The whole control was implemented in fixed Duty cy cle round(75e6/8192/2)
W1

point using Simulink. Code Composer Studio is successfully used F2812 eZdsp [Igin] Ig C28x PWM

as a flexible user interface for controlling and monitoring the

[START]

W2

process. The experimental results show that this low cost DSP is [Udcin] Udc C28x PWM

capable of running a complex control structure in real time at a EN

= Vu * 2^
y = Qu << W1

high sampling rate. In this case a current THD close to 1% and a [Idcin] Idc
Ey = Eu
Vy = Vu

high efficiency MPP tracking has been achieved. Aquisitions

[ThetaGrid] y = Qu >>
Ey = Eu + 5
W2 C28x PWM

= Vu * 2^
Control 1
y = Qu >> W3

1.2 Control scheme [sintheta]

y = Eu + 1
C28x PWM_B

A PV inverter converts the DC power produced by solar panels to

grid synchronized AC power. Fig. 2 The Simulink scheme of the single-phase MPPT control
A simplified scheme for the whole control can be seen on Fig. 1. 1.3 DSP Implementation
Simulink is a very flexible tool for dynamic simulation.
Together with RTW, the Embedded Target for TI C2000
compiles the model, generating a real-time C-code, which is
forwarded to CCS. The DSP code is generated automatically and
downloaded to the DSP by CCS, which is also used to debug the
÷ code and to monitor and observe the variables. This process can
×
be visualized as:

sin (θ )
×
Fig. 1 Scheme of the implemented control strategy
The three main parts are represented by the current controller, the
MPPT and the PLL. The input of the current controller is the error
between the measured and reference grid current (ig ref and ig). In
order to synchronize the injected grid current with the grid voltage
(to achieve unity power factor), the phase of the reference current
is taken from the grid voltage, calculated by the Phase Lock Loop
(PLL) block. The current controller output is the reference grid
voltage, which divided by the DC source voltage gives the duty
cycle for the inverter. The current controller is a P+Resonant
controller [1] capable of zero steady state error for a sinusoidal
reference signal. The transfer function presented below, where ω0
represents the resonance frequency of the integrator:
s where fHSPCLK is the frequency of the high-speed peripheral
H PR = K P + K I 2
s + ω02 (1.1)
Fig. 3 Illustration of the Simulink and RTW interaction with CCS for real-time
implementation (source: http://www.mathworks.com/products/tic2000)
The Simulink model was implemented in fixed point, choosing a
sampling frequency of fs=8192Hz. A value of power of 2 has
been chosen in order to optimize the operation where
multiplication with the sampling period (e.g. integration) is
needed. The frequency of the output pulses is defined by the
waveform period from (1.2) and it can be calculated using the
following formula:
f HSPCLK 1 75e6 1
f PWM = ⋅ = ⋅ = 8192Hz
(WAVEFORM PERIOD) 2 75e6 ( 2 ⋅ 8192) 2
(1.2)
clock. The ½ term is used due to the symmetrical PWM.
The CCS is used for debugging and online visualization of the
essential variables. This can be done either directly viewing the
value of the variable in the watch window, or plotting it on a graph current harmonics level but still does not comply with the
window, as shown on Fig. 4. standard. A drastic decrease in the THD can be seen when the
compensation for the 5th harmonic is turned on, the THD
decreases to 2.2%, well below the limit in the IEEE standard.
Turning on the compensation for the 7th harmonic, a further
improvement of the grid current waveform quality is achieved,
resulting in a THD of 1.2%
Grid voltage
400

200

Vg [V]
0

-200

-400
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

Grid current
20

10

Ig [A]
0

-10

-20
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04
time [s]

Fig. 6 Current THD for different Fig. 7 Grid voltage and grid current for a
cases of harmonic compensation 10A peak current reference
The MPP tracker was also tested and the results can be seen on
Fig. 8. The MPP was reached at 1300W and the oscillations at
the maximum were around ±20W, due to the noise in the
Fig. 4 The Code Composer Studio environment measurements.
1.4 Hardware setup

Fig. 8 Tracking of the MPP using 16 BP-MSX120 solar panels

Fig. 5 The Green Power Inverter hardware setup
The picture in Fig. 5 presents the laboratory setup and is detailed
below:
• PV Simulator, which serves as the input voltage for the
inverter, with a voltage range of 400-650V. It is realized with
two Delta Elektronika 300-5 300V/5A power supplies. The
system also can be connected to the available 1.5kW solar array.
• A three-phase 400V/5.5A 1.5kW Danfoss VLT 5005 inverter.
In the case of single-phase configuration only two legs of the
inverter bridge are controlled by the two PWM signals generated
by the DSP.
• An LC filter, which, together with the transformer inductance
forms an LCL filter, and provides the filtering of the PWM
output voltage from the inverter in order to apply it to the grid,
through the transformer.
• A Voltech three-phase power analyzer
• The PWM pulses for the inverter control are generated by a
Spectrum Digital TMS320F2812 eZdsp card, featuring a
TMS320F2812 32 bits DSP from Texas Instruments.
1.5 Results
1.6 Conclusion
The current controller with selective harmonic compensation,
together with the MPPT algorithms have been successfully
implemented on the TMS320F2812 eZdsp board using Simulink
RTW, Embedded Target for TI C2000 family and CCS. Even
with a complex control system it was possible to run it at 8kHz
sampling frequency. Results show that the harmonic
compensation works well resulting in a low current THD
(THDi=1.2%), well within the requirement of the IEEE 929
standard. Together with the current controller, the MPP tracker
is also running and is capable of tracking the MPP of the PV
panel, having 3% power oscillations at the maximum. The
C28xx family proves to be a very good low cost solution for PV
inverter applications.
References:
[1]. R. Teodorescu, F. Blaabjerg: A new control structure for grid-connected
LCL PV inverters with zero steady-state error and selective harmonic
compensation, IEEE 2004
[2]. Michael J. Newman, Donald G. Holmes: Delta Operator Digital Filters for
High Performance Inverter Applications, IEEE Transactions on Power
Electronics, vol. 18, no.1, Jan.2003
[3]. Chihchiang Hua, Jongrong Lin, Chihming Shen: Implementation of a DSP-
Controlled Photovoltaic System with Peak Power Tracking, IEEE
Transactions on industrial electronics, Vol. 45, No. 1, Feb.1998.
[4]. TMS320x281x DSP Event Manager (EV) Reference Guide; Literature no:
spru065c. Source: http://focus.ti.com/lit/ug/spru065c/spru065c.pdf (pg 60)

Without any harmonic compensation the grid current THD was

above 10.5%, which does not fulfill the IEEE 929 standard.
Turning on the compensation for the 3rd harmonic, decreases the