Space Vector Modulation Direct power control of Grid-Connected
Photovoltaic Converter with Reactive Power Compensation
F. Mulolani, M. Armstrong
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England, UK.
Email: f.mulolani@ncl.ac.uk , matthew.armstrong@ncl.ac.uk
Keywords: direct power control, photovoltaic, reactive power
compensation, voltage source converter.
Abstract
Photovoltaic (PV) energy is one of the fastest growing
renewable energy resources. Most PV units are connected to
the distribution or transmission grid by voltage source
converters (VSC). As the number and size of grid-connected
PV units increase, the requirements placed on them by grid
operators are changing. Among the new requirements by some
grid codes is that PV units should help with voltage support by
reactive power compensation. One significant advantage of a
grid connected PV system capable of reactive power
compensation is that it can operate during the night as a
reactive power compensator. This paper presents the control of
a grid-connected PV system with reactive power
compensation using Direct Power Control with Space Vector
Modulation (DPC-SVM). Simulation results for both daytime
and night-time operation are presented. The results show good
dynamic and steady-state performance, decoupled control of
active and reactive power, low distortion in the output voltage
and current, and constant switching frequency over a wide
range of conditions.
1 Introduction
Renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaics, have
become widely used for power generation in recent years [1],
[2], [3]. Solar PV units are either stand-alone or grid-
connected. In a grid-connected system, the dc voltage from the
PV array is typically converted to an ac voltage via a power
electronic voltage source converter (VSC). PV arrays produce
active power which is proportional to the irradiation and thus
during periods of low irradiation, and also night-time, the VSC
is heavily under-utilized. To increase the utilization of the grid
connected VSC, it is possible to apply it for reactive power
compensation in addition to active power generation; reactive
power compensation does not directly depend on the solar
irradiation. The application of VSC based renewable energy
systems for reactive power compensation is not new and has
been discussed in literature [4], [5]. Furthermore, employing
PV systems for reactive power compensation during the night
is presented in [6], [7].
1
In addition, changes in the German grid code require PV
systems to participate in reactive power compensation and grid
voltage regulation [8]. Other grid codes are expected to follow
suit, hence this mode of operation is likely to become
increasingly important in the future. The overall performance
of the system will significantly depend on the effectiveness of
the VSC control. Various VSC control techniques have been
proposed. Voltage oriented control (VOC) is a popular current
control method [9]. It is based on linear PI controllers
implemented in the synchronous reference frame (SRF)
aligned with the grid voltage vector. In the SRF, ac quantities
are seen as dc quantities and the PI controllers are able to track
the reference currents without a steady-state error. The active
power and the reactive power are controlled indirectly through
the currents. However, there is a cross-coupling of the active
and reactive current components which has to be decoupled to
ensure accurate control of the current. Virtual-flux oriented
control (VFOC) is closely related to VOC [11], [10]. It is
based on the assumption that the grid can be represented as a
large ac motor and the grid voltage is assumed to be induced
by a virtual grid flux. The SRF is aligned with this virtual flux.
One advantage of VFOC over VOC is that the virtual flux
vector rotates more smoothly than the voltage vector and its
angle can be obtained accurately even without using a phase-
locked loop (PLL) which is needed to obtain the voltage angle
in VOC. But the current control scheme remains essentially
the same as in VOC.
Direct power control (DPC) is another control scheme that has
been proposed for control of VSCs [12], [13]. It is based on
the direct control of active power and reactive power without
current control loops. The active power and reactive power are
controlled independently of each other using hysteresis
controllers. It has no coordinate transformations and does not
use a PWM modulator. Instead, the converter switching states
are determined by using a switching table in which the
switching pattern is determined using the voltage vector
position and the outputs of the hysteresis controllers. It is a
simple algorithm with good dynamics. However, its
implementation requires a very high sampling frequency
which needs fast microprocessors, and it gives a variable
switching frequency making filter design difficult. Virtual-flux
direct power control (VF-DPC) is one of the proposed
improvements to DPC [14]. It is based on using the estimated
virtual-flux for control and power estimation. Its main
advantage is that it has less noisy power estimation due to the
low-pass filter nature of the integrators used for flux 2 Model and Operation of the System
estimation. It also has a lower sampling frequency than DPC
and has a lower THD with highly distorted grid voltages. The block diagram of the complete system is shown in fig 1.
However, its sampling frequency is still higher than that for It consists of a PV array, a three-phase two-level VSC
VOC and it still has a variable switching frequency. connected to the grid through an LCL filter; and the controller.
Improvements to DPC based on predictive control are
presented in [15], [16]. A drawback of predictive control is PV Array
3-phase VSC L1
that it requires significant computational effort to implement L2 Grid

and thus needs a fast microprocessor. Furthermore, the

performance of the controller relies on accurate knowledge of
{ Cf

the system parameters. Constant switching frequency is not Vdc Sa Sb Sc

vabc iabc
guaranteed. A DPC scheme which guarantees a constant - abc
switching frequency can be achieved by replacing the SVM
+ αβ
vα * vβ*
hysteresis controllers with PI controllers and the switching Vdc(ref)
θ vα vβ abc
αβ
table with a PWM modulator such as Space Vector dq VF αβ
Modulation (SVM). Such a scheme is proposed in [17] and is PI
vd* vq*
Estimation
iα iβ
called direct power control with space vector modulation PI PI ψα ψβ
(DPC-SVM). It combines the advantages of DPC and VOC q Instantaneous
and has the following attributes: pref + - power
calculation
- +
p
x No current regulation loops -
PI │Vg│
qref
x Good dynamics +
│Vg│(ref)
x Decoupled active and reactive power control
x Simple and noise resistant power estimation algorithm, Fig. 1 Block diagram of grid connected PV system with
easy to implement in a microprocessor controller
x Lower sampling frequency than DPC and VF-DPC
The mathematical model of the system can be derived by
x Constant switching frequency considering the single-phase equivalent circuit in fig 2.
In this paper, DPC-SVM is applied to a grid-connected PV
system with reactive power compensation. The mathematical i1 R1,L1 R2,L2 i2
model of the VSC is derived in the stationary reference frame
+ icf + +
and its operating modes are described. The main features of
the control algorithm are presented and its simplicity is shown Cf
mathematically. The proposed night-time application requires vc vcf vg
that the dc voltage is maintained constant in the absence of Rd
active power from the PV array. - - -

In [7], it is proposed that the dc capacitor should be pre- Fig. 2. Single-phase equivalent circuit
charged. However, this adds more components to the system.
In this paper the dc capacitor voltage is maintained by the dc The equations are derived for the model in the stationary
voltage controller without any additional components. Having reference frame (αβ).
a constant dc voltage has the advantage of operating close to
the maximum power point (MPP) of the PV array without
DE DE vdc
having to measure the PV current [18], [19]. To meet the THD vc S  
requirements in the injected current, an LCL filter is used on 2
the grid-side. It has the advantage of giving a high attenuation
of -6dB above the resonant frequency, using relatively small
filter components. However, there is the possibility of d i1
DE
DE DE DE
controller instability around the resonant frequency. Passive vc v cf  R1 i1  L1  
damping is used to prevent this instability. The simulation dt
results show that the control is effective, robust and stable
over a wide range of operating conditions.
DE
DE DE DE di2
v cf vg  R2 i 2  L2  
dt

2
 DE DE DE
i Cf i1  i 2 

DE DE
Where; vc is the converter output voltage vector; S is the
DE
switching space vector; vdc is the dc voltage, v g is the grid
voltage vector; R1 , R2 , L1 , L2 , and C f are the parameters
DE
of the LCL filter; v cf is the vector of the voltage across the
DE DE DE
filter capacitor; i1 , i 2 and i Cf are the vectors of the
current through the filter components.
Fig. 3. Phasor diagrams for different operating modes (a)
The effect of the filter capacitor at the fundamental frequency, generating P and Q (b) generating P, absorbing Q (c)
and the resistances of the filter inductors, are typically small generating Q (d) absorbing Q
and are ignored in the following analysis [20]. The space
vectors are related to the abc parameters by the general form: The relationship between the grid voltage vector and the
virtual flux vector is

\ g DE ³v
DE
ª 1 1 ºªx º dt 
1   g
2« 2 » « x » 
a
DE ª xD º 2
x «x » « »
¬ E¼ 3« 3 3 »« b » Using pure integrators for the virtual flux estimation has the
0  «x » disadvantage of integrator drift and possible saturation if there
¬« 2 2 ¼» ¬ c ¼ is an offset in the voltage. This is avoided by using low-pass
filters as integrators. Therefore, the virtual flux estimation
Assuming the converter is lossless, the active power flow using two cascaded first order low-pass filters is given by [21]:
between the PV array and the grid is given by
§ Z0 ·§ Z0 ·
PPV  vdcCd
dvdc
dt
Re >
3 DE DE
2
@
v g i 
\ g ,D 2¨¨ ¸¸¨¨ ¸¸v g ,D
© s  Z0 ¹© s  Z0 ¹
(10)

PPV is the power from the PV array; Cd is the dc § Z0 ·§ Z0 ·

Where \ g ,E 2¨¨ ¸¸¨¨ ¸¸v g ,E 
DE © s  Z 0 ¹© s  Z 0 ¹
capacitor; i is the complex conjugate of the grid current.
Where Z0 is the base angular frequency, which is equal to the
The active and reactive power exchanged between the grid angular frequency. Each low-pass filter gives a phase shift
converter and the grid is given by
of -45° and an attenuation of 1 2 at Z 0 . Cascading them
VcVg gives a phase shift of  90q and an attenuation of 0.5 at Z 0 .
P sin G 
ZL A multiplication factor of 2 is thus needed in order to get the
correct amplitude of the virtual flux. The virtual flux angle is
VcVg cos G  Vg
2

Q  calculated as
ZL
§ \ g ,E ·
T arctan¨ ¸ 
Where Vc is the rms value of the converter line voltage; V g is ¨\ ¸
© g ,D ¹
the rms value of the grid line voltage; Z is the grid angular
The virtual flux vector rotates more smoothly than the voltage
frequency; L is the sum of the inductances in the LCL filter.
vector because of the low-pass filters used for integration.
The operating modes of the system based on (7) and (8) are
Thus, the virtual flux angle calculated using (12) can be used
given in fig 3.
for synchronization. This replaces the phase-locked loop
which is normally used for grid synchronization and gives
comparable performance whilst being much simpler to
3. Description of the Controller implement than other synchronization methods [22], [23],
[24].
In the proposed controller, the virtual flux is estimated from
the measured voltage.

3
The instantaneous active power and reactive power are the
controlled variables. They are calculated from the measured
current and the virtual flux. A detailed derivation of the power
estimation based on virtual flux is given in [14]. The equations
used here are:
The reactive power reference is kept at zero for unity power
factor operation. The variation of the dc voltage is shown in
fig 4(b). The figure shows that the dc voltage controller
regulates the dc voltage at a constant value and, when the
active power changes, the dc voltage returns back to its

p Z0 \ g ,D iE \ g ,E iD  
constant value in less than one cycle of the 50 Hz grid voltage.

4
x 10
q Z0 \ g ,D iD \ g ,E iE 

P(kW), Q(kVAr)
 10
The calculated powers are compared with the reference
powers and fed to PI controllers. The active power reference is 5
determined by the dc voltage PI controller, while the reactive
power reference is determined by the grid voltage controller. 0

The outputs of the PI controllers are reference voltages vd 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4
Time (s)
and vq which are dc quantities in the synchronous reference
frame and are converted to the stationary reference frame (a)
using the transformation:
Voltage (V) 800

ªvD º ªcos T  sin T º ªvd º 700

« » « sin T « » 
«¬vE »¼ ¬ cos T »¼ «¬vq »¼
600
0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

The transformed reference voltages, vD and vE , are used to Time (s)
determine the switching signals by the space vector (b)
modulator.
Fig. 4. Daytime operation with varying irradiation (a) active
power (red) and reactive power (blue) (b) dc voltage
4. Simulation Results
The system in fig 1 is modelled in Matlab/Simulink. The
parameters used in the simulation model are given in table 1. 4.2 Daytime with Reactive Power Compensation

Parameter Value To investigate the performance of the system with reactive

Nominal power Pn 100kW power compensation, a voltage dip of 90% in the grid voltage
Grid voltage (line to line) VL 415V is applied at t 0.2s , lasting for 0.1s . A voltage swell of
Grid frequency f 50Hz 110% is also applied at t 0.3s lasting for 0.1s . The
Sampling frequency fs 10kHz irradiation is kept constant at 750W/m2 giving a constant
Switching frequency fsw 10kHz active power of 75kW. The reactive power reference is
DC voltage Vd 760V determined from the grid voltage controller. The results are
DC capacitor Cd 2800μF shown in fig 5. When the voltage decreases, the converter
Inverter side inductance L1 0.45mH generates reactive power which helps to regulate the grid
Grid side inductance L2 0.09mH voltage and bring it closer to its nominal value of 1 p.u. When
Filter capacitor Cf 36μF the voltage increases above 1 p.u, the converter absorbs
Damping resistor Rd 2.5Ω reactive power and brings the voltage closer to its nominal
value. When the voltage is restored to its nominal value, the
Table 1: Parameters in grid connected PV system model reactive power drops back to zero. The variation of the
reactive power is shown in fig 5(a). The dc voltage controller
4.1 Varying Irradiation maintains the dc voltage at a constant value as shown in fig
5(b). The magnitude of the voltage at the PCC in per-unit is
The performance of the system under varying irradiation is shown in fig 5(c).
investigated. The results are shown in fig 4. The irradiation is
varied in steps from 500W/m2, 750W/m2 and 1000W/m2 at a
constant temperature of 25°C. The active power varies in steps
of 50kW, 75kW and 100kW respectively as shown in fig 4(a).

4
 5 4
x 10 x 10
1
P(kW), Q(kVAr)

P(kW), Q(kVAr)
5

0
0
-5
-10
-1
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Time (s) Time (s)
(a) (a)
800 800

Voltage (V)
Voltage (V)

750 750

700 700

650
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Time (s) Time (s)
(b) (b)
1.1 1.1
Voltage (pu)

Voltage (pu)

1 1

0.9 0.9

0.8
0.1 0.3 0.2 0.4 0.5 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Time (s) Time (s)
(c) (c)
Fig. 5. Daytime operation with reactive power compensation Fig. 6. Night-time operation (a) active power (red) and
(a) active power (red) and reactive power (blue) (b) dc reactive power (blue) (b) dc voltage (c) PCC voltage
voltage (c) PCC voltage magnitude magnitude

4.3 Night-time Operation 5. Conclusion

In this mode of operation, the irradiation is zero and the
system has no active power output. The converter should work
as a fully inductive, or fully capacitive, compensator while
maintaining the dc voltage constant. The reactive power
capability for capacitive and inductive modes is demonstrated
by applying a voltage dip and a voltage swell to the grid
voltage. The voltage dip of 90% is applied at t 0.2s and
lasts for 0.1s ; and the voltage swell of 110% is applied at
t 0.3s and lasts for 0.1s . When the voltage drops below
its nominal value, the converter generates reactive power and
helps to regulate the voltage close to its nominal value. When
the voltage goes above its nominal value, the converter absorbs
reactive power and helps to regulate the voltage close to its
nominal value. The active power and the reactive power
variation are shown in fig 6(a). During the grid voltage
variations, the dc voltage is kept constant as shown in fig 6(b).
The per-unit magnitude of the voltage at the PCC is shown in
fig 6(c).
In this paper, the control of a grid-connected PV converter
with reactive power compensation has been presented. Using a
simple direct power control algorithm, the converter switching
frequency is kept constant by using SVM. Decoupled control
of active and reactive power is achieved without using a
decoupling network and without coordinate transformation to
the SRF; both of which are needed in VOC. The controller
exhibits stability over a wide range of operating conditions
and has a fast dynamic response. The dc voltage is regulated at
a constant value under all conditions. The simulation results
show that DPC-SVM is an effective control algorithm for
grid-connected PV converters with reactive power
compensation. The proposed application increases the
utilization of the PV system, without increasing its complexity
and cost. The algorithm is computationally efficient and can
be realised on a modestly priced microprocessor platform.
Unlike some solutions, the method does not require additional
hardware to pre-charge the dc link capacitors.

5
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