IEEE International Conference on Computer, Communication and Control (IC4-2015).
Modeling of a Single-Phase Grid-Connected
Photovoltaic System Using MATLAB/Simulink
Santosh S. Raghuwanshi1, Kamlesh Gupta2
Electrical & Electronics Engineering Department
Medi-Caps Institute of Technology And Management
Indore, India
er_sant@rediffmail.com1, erkgupta@gmail.com2
Abstract—In this paper, a complete simulation model of a
single phase grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system with
associated controllers is presented. The simulation model is
developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK tool. The main component of
the single phase grid-connected PV system are, a PV array, a dc-
dc boost converter, a PWM based voltage source inverter and
filter. For high efficiency of the PV system used maximum power
point tracking (MPPT) algorithm. Simulation studies shows that
the sun irradiance are increase so increase the PV array output
power and also increase the PQ. PV energy is large than load
demand; the excess energy is will exported to the utility.
Keywords— Grid connected PV systems; DC-DC boost converter;
PWM Inverter; MPPT
I. INTRODUCTION
Due to reserve of fossil fuel dwindling and the global
warming effect looming large, alternative energies become
popular. The most attention of alternative energies is solar
energy. There are two types of technology that employed solar
energy, namely solar thermal and solar cell. A PV cell (solar
cell) converts the sunlight into the electrical energy by the
photovoltaic effect. Energy from PV modules offers several
advantages, such as, requirement of little maintenance and no
environmental pollution. Recently, PV arrays are used in
many applications, such as, battery chargers, solar powered
water pumping systems, grid connected PV systems, solar
hybrid vehicles and satellite for engineers and scientists. Fuel
cells, photovoltaic (PV) devices, and storage battery sources
produce low voltages, so a dc–dc boost converter is generally
required to adapt the voltage level for the grid-connected
inverter. This dc–dc converter, in addition to boosting, also
regulates the inverter input voltage and sometimes isolates the
low- and high-voltage circuits.
The conventional stand-alone photovoltaic systems have the
advantages of simple system configuration and control
scheme. However, in order to draw maximum power from PV
arrays and store excess energy, battery banks are required in
these systems. For high power systems, they will increase
system cost and weight, and narrow the application areas.
Therefore, grid-connected systems, which are designed to
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relieve this shortcoming, have become the primary researches
in PV power supply applications.
The solar cell array produces only a small amount of
current and voltage. So, in order to meet a large load demand,
the solar cell array has to be connected into modules and the
modules connected into arrays. The output voltage from PV
array is changeable with solar radiation and ambient
temperature. So in order to connect the electrical grid the
output voltage from PV array should be fixed and converted to
AC voltage which can be solutions have evolved including
energy conservation through improved energy efficiency, a
reduction in fossil fuel use and an increase in environmentally
friendly energy supplies.
Among them, photovoltaic (PV) application has received a
great attention in research because it appears to be one of the
most efficient and effective solutions to this environmental
problem done by an inverter. The PV converter and inverter
have the task to guarantee safe and efficient operation, to track
the maximum power of the PV solar cell array and controlling
the power which is injected from the inverters to the electrical
grid.
Grid-connected PV plants makes good economic sense to
maximize the amount of power generated by PV arrays and
thus transferred to the grid at all times. An important
technique for achieving the above is called the maximum
power point tracking (MPPT). In principle, this controls the
output of a PV system to match with the grid for all
atmospheric conditions. Hence, it results in the system
operating at the maximum power point at all times.
The main aim of this paper is to establish a complete
modeling and simulation of PV system connected to single
phase electrical grid using Matlab/Simulink software.
II. MATHEMATICAL MODEL FOR A
PHOTOVOLTAIC CELL
A photovoltaic module consists of a number of
photovoltaic cells connected in a particular configuration. It is
important to understand the components and the operation of a
single photovoltaic cell, then the operation of the module
under different conditions is easier to understand.
An ideal photovoltaic cell consists of a current source and a
diode. A non-ideal model of a photovoltaic cell has an
 IEEE International Conference on Computer, Communication and Control (IC4-2015).

additional shunt resistance connected parallel to the diode and by the number of cells connected in series and multiplying the
a series resistance. An equivalent circuit of a photovoltaic cell current by the number of cells connected in parallel. Three
is shown in Fig.1. important operating points are open-circuit voltage, short
circuit current and Maximum Power Point (MPP).

Fig.1 Equivalent circuit of a photovoltaic cell

The light generated current is modelled as a current source, as

Fig. 2: PV-cell operating point
shown in Fig.1. The light generated current depends on the
amount of irradiation the cell receives. The output current of
III. SIMULATION OF THE PV SYSTEM IN
the cell is thus calculated by the equation (Ramos-Hernanz et
MATLAB/SIMULINK SOFTWARE
al. 2012, 47):
I=Ipv=Iph – Id – Ish (1)
The system model shown in Fig.3, demonstrates PV solar cell
array connected to a 50 HZ, 220 V, UG through a DC/DC
Where, Iis the output current of a cell (A),
boost converter and DC/AC inverter. The 400 V obtained
Iphis the photocurrent (A),
from DC/DC converter is applied to a signal dc to ac inverter.
Idis the current through the diode (A),
The task of the boost DC/DC converter drains the power from
Ishis the current through the shunt resistance (A).
the PV solar cell array and supplies the DC link capacitor with
Module photo-current-
a maximum power point tracker obtained from the MPPT
controller. An L filter is inserted after the dc-ac inverter in
Iph = [Iscr + Ki(T-298)*O/1000] (2) order to eliminate the harmonics contained in both the voltage
and current of the inverter output. The main task of the grid
Module reverse saturation current-Irs connected photovoltaic system control system is to be sure
that the signals of the inverter output and grid signals have the
Irs = Iscr/[exp(qv/NsKAT)-1] (3) same frequency, phase and RMS values.
The module saturation current Id varies with the cell
temperature, which is given by

Id = Irs[T/Tr]3exp[{(q*Ego)/BK}{1/Tr – 1/T}] (4)

In view of that, the current to the load can be given as

I= Ipv=Np*Iph – Np *I[exp q*(V+RsI)/(NsKT)-1] –

(V+RsI)/Rsh(5)

In this equation, q is the electron charge, V is the voltage

across the diode, K is the Boltzmann's constant, T is the
junction temperature, N is the ideality factor of the diode, and
Rsand Rshare the series and shunt resistors of the cell,
respectively. As a result, the complete physical behavior of Fig.3. Grid connected PV system block diagram
the PV cell is in relation with Iph, Is, Rsand Rshfrom one hand
and with two environmental parameters as the temperature and
the solar radiation from the other hand.
Fig. 2 shows the I-V operating characteristics of a solar cell.
A PV array comprises individual PV cells connected into a
unit of suitable power rating. Its characteristics are
determinable by multiplying the voltage of an individual cell

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 IEEE International Conference on Computer, Communication and Control (IC4-2015).
Fig.4. Grid connected PV system using MATLAB
A. Model of the boost dc-dc converter
For grid-connected PV applications, two hardware topologies
for MPPT have been mostly studied worldwide, known as
one-stage and two stage PV systems. In this work, it was
selected the second case, i.e. the two-stage PV energy
conversion system, because it offers an additional degree of
freedom in the operation of the system when compared with
the one-stage configuration, in addition to decreasing the
global efficiency of the combined system because of the
connection of two cascade stages. Therefore, by including a
dc-dc converter between the PV array and the inverter
connected to the electric grid, various control objectives are
possible to track concurrently with the PV system operation.
The intermediate dc-dc converter is built with an (IGBT) as
main power switch in a standard unidirectional boost topology
as shown in Fig.4. The dc-dc converter output is connected to
the dc bus of the dc-ac converter as depicted in Fig. 6. The dc-
dc converter produces a chopped output voltage and therefore
controls the average dc voltage relation between its input and
output aiming at continuously so the characteristic of the PV
system and the dc-ac converter be matching. The steady-state
voltage and current relations of the boost converter operating
in continuous current mode are
VD = Vpv/1-D …….. (6)
ID= ηb(1− D)Ipv……(7)
Where:
ηb: Efficiency of the boost converter
D: Dc-dc converter duty cycle
Ipv: PV array output curren
Vpv: PV array output voltage
ID: Dc bus current (inverter side)
VD: Dc bus voltage (inverter side)
The main role of the Boost DC-DC converter is to insure:
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x Set the PV operating point (VPV, IPV) to MPP
x Efficiently step up the photovoltaic array voltage
VPV to a higher DC voltage VDC
B. MPPT Model
In MPPT operation, the PV-array produces maximum power
under variable conditions of the solar irradiance and
environmental temperature. Fig. 4, shows Simulink block
model of MPPT, in MPPT model Vpv voltage and Ipv current
taken by PV panel. These voltage and current connect a
filterblock, after filtering voltage will change Vn and Vb, after
filtering current will change In and Ib. The power Pn=Vn*In
and Pb=Vb*Ib will obtained, difference of this power is ΔP
=Pn-Pb and difference between Vn-Vb is ΔV. This signal is
compare to threshold switch. In this signal obtained duty cycle
of the converter. This duty cycle is compare to 10KHz
frequency carrier wave and obtained PWM based duty cycle.
P =V*I ………….(8)
Differencing the eq. 8 gives:
dP/dV =dVI ……………. (9)
In condition of zero slope of PV curve where:
dP/dV = 0 …………….(10)
We have
dI/dV= -I/V ………..(11)
When
dI/dV< -I/V the voltage must be reduced in order to achieve
MPP operation. When dI/dV> -I/Vthe voltage must be raised
in order to achieve the maximum power point of the PV
generator.
C. Inverter modelling
In the case of grid-connected PV system, different inverter
topologies and controllers are usually used for interfacing the
PVG and the utility grid.PM from the dc–dc boost converter is
then led to a dc–acinverter modeled as a full-bridge switching
converter. A filter at its output (Lfilter) allows only the
fundamentaland some minor voltage harmonics to appear at
the pointof common coupling (PCC) with the grid. The aim of
its controlsystem is to produce an output current Ic, which: 1)
is almostsinusoidal, 2) is in phase with the grid voltage Vgrid ,
at the PCC and 3) has an rms value so thatPgrid = Vgrid(rms)
* Ic(rms) (i.e., the converter transfers the dc power to the ac
grid). Theconverter senses the instantaneous Vgrid and
calculates its rmsvalue. The rms value of the reference output
current is then calculatedby Ic(rms) = Pc / Vc(rms) The
instantaneousgrid voltage Vgrid is passed through a phase-
locked loop (PLL)system. The PLL is used to provide a unit
power factor operation which involves synchronization of the
inverter output current with the grid voltage and to give a
clean sinusoidal current reference. The output of the PLL
system Vsyn is a sinusoid with unity amplitude and in phase
 IEEE International Conference on Computer, Communication and Control (IC4-2015).

with the fundamentalcomponent of Vgrid . This sinusoid is
then multipliedby —2*Ic(rms) to form the instantaneous
reference outputcurrent. The full bridge inverter are
controlledso that the instantaneous output current Ic follows
the reference current Ic*, as closely as possible.
Figure 7, shows the voltage and current output waveforms
with the system supplying 1kW to the grid. The rms voltage is
155 V and rms current is 7.07 A.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

The PV power system PV panel parameters of open circuit

voltage (Voc) 33.2V, Short circuit current (Isc) 8.58A. Each
panel has a nominal power of 210 W and an open-circuit
voltage of 33.2 V. The output of the filter is directly connected
to the grid without insulation transformer. The parameter of
the L filter is 0.01H.
In this paper analyzed, the PV panels worked at almost
constant temperature 25˚C and step change in the solar
irradiance from 600 W/m2 to 1000W/m2at 2.0 sec.
Fig. 5, shows the dc output voltage, current and power of Figure 7, utility grid voltage and current
the PV panels for constant temperature and step change in the
solar irradiance from 600 W/m2to 1000W/m2 at 2.0 sec. The Figure 8, illustrates that the active and reactive power at at 600
generated PV array dc output voltage, current and power are W/m2and 1000 W/m2sun irradiance. The value of active power
respectively 24.9V, 4.4A and 111.7W at 600 W/m2and 1000 at 600 W/m2 is 298W and 1000 W/m2 is 310 W. we can say
W/m2sun irradiance, dc voltage, current and power are the sun irradiance are increase active power.
respectively 26.5V, 5.3A and 141.1W. It is obvious that the
conversion has succeeded with limited losses.
Figure 6, shows the PV panel output power and after MPPT,
dc-dc converter output power in different sun irradiance and
constant temperature. The mean output PV panel power at 600
W/m2, 111.1W and after MPPT is 110W and 1000 W/m 2,
140.1W and after MPPT is 139W.

Figure 8, Active and reactive power of grid connected load

V. CONCLUSION
2 2
Figure 5, PV array output voltage, current & power at 600 W/m to 1000W/m
(T=25˚C constant) In this paper, we extend a PV grid connected system which
gives maximum output power and maximum efficiency at
different irradiance conditions. In this paper, we develop
mathematical modeling of PV cell, boost converter, PWM
based inverter and AC single phase grid. The maximum power
point tracking algorithm P&O is presented which gives
maximum efficiency of the grid connected PV system. PWM
based inverter with filter inductance is designed which gives
sinusoidal output voltage. The grid voltage and frequency is
synchronized by using PLL techniques. Moreover, this study
shows that the sun irradiance are increase so increase the PV
panel output power and also increase the PQ. PV energy is
large than load demand; the excess energy is will exported to
Figure 6, PV array output power and MPPT power at 600 W/m2 to 1000W/m2 the utility.
(T=25˚C constant)

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 IEEE International Conference on Computer, Communication and Control (IC4-2015).

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