City University of Hong Kong

Department of Electrical Engineering

EE 4101 – Industrial Electronics

Tutorial 5

1. Briefly describe how the electrical characteristics between the solar panel voltage
!P and solar panel current IP̅ shown in Fig. 1 are obtained experimentally.
V

Fig. 1

Solution:
The electrical characteristics are obtained by connecting a programmable electronic load,
which can firstly set the DC operation point and then sweep the panel current and voltage
with sinusoidal variation. In this figure, one can see that the panel current varies between
0.55A and 1.17A and the panel voltage varies between 3V and 59V. The DC operating
point is around 0.86A and 31V. The magnitudes of the AC voltage and current are 28V
and 0.31A. Sinusoidal perturbation is injected to study the frequency response.

2. Explain why there is presence of the loop under high-frequency operation.

Solution:
The loop is due to the presence of the junction capacitance in the equivalent circuit. A
simple explanation is that the capacitor voltage and current have 9-degree phase
difference that makes the voltage-current form a circular shape on X-Y plot. Please refer
to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_curve for studying the Lissajous figures.

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copyrighted material without express permission of redistribution. These slides are archived here for CityU’s
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 3. Why is necessary to connect a diode in parallel with the output of each solar panel
in a string of series-connected solar panels.

Solution:
Under the partial shading condition, the panel with lower irradiance will form local hot
spot. Thus, an anti-parallel diode is connected across to the panel to avoid such local hot
spot.

4. Fig. 2 shows the architecture of the module inverter for a photovoltaic system.

Fig. 2

(a) Draw the structural block diagram of each module inverter.

(b) Discuss the operating principles of the whole system.
(c) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the system.
(d) Why is it sometimes necessary to connect a battery system to the photovoltaic
system?

Solution:
(a) Each module inverter consists of a front-end DC/DC converter for extracting
maximum power from the panel (not necessary true in some cases if there is an
over-supply of energy), and an DC/AC converter for converting DC power into an
AC power.
(b) The general principle is that the system will keep tracking the MPP of each panel,
so that the energy supplied to the AC grid is maximum. Then, the DC power inside
is converter into AC power.
(c) The advantages are 1) maximum power of the whole string can be achieved, 2) No
DC cabling problem, 3) Modularity. The disadvantages are 1) High cost and 2)
lifetime issue because they are all placed outdoor.
(d) To stabilize the power supply, but usually the battery system is not placed inside
the module because of the lifetime consideration and maintenance cost. However
some applications, such as solar-powered lampposts will have the local battery
storage.

Please note and abide by copyright laws. Some items contained in these presentations are taken from
copyrighted material without express permission of redistribution. These slides are archived here for CityU’s
educational activities and CityU students taking EE4101 only. Distribution without prior permission is not
allowed.