SCA '18, October 10–11, 2018, Tetouan, Morocco S. ESSAGHIR et al.

Comparison between PI and PR Current Controllers of a Grid-

Connected Photovoltaic System Supplying Nonlineare Load

Soukaina Essaghir Mohamed Benchagra EL Barbri Noureddine

ISERT Laboratory ISERT Laboratory ISERT Laboratory
Univ. Sultan Moulay Slimane, Univ. Sultan Moulay Slimane, Univ. Sultan Moulay Slimane,
ENSA-Khouribga ENSA-Khouribga ENSA-Khouribga
Khouribga, Morocco Khouribga, Morocco Khouribga, Morocco
essaghirsoukaina@gmail.com m.benchagra@gmail.fr elbarbri.noureddine@yahoo.fr

ABSTRACT
This paper presents a three-phase grid-connected PV system
supplying nonlinear load, which controls active power and
harmonic compensation. A Proportional-Resonant (PR) controller
is used for replacing the conventional Proportional-Integral (PI)
controller in this system.
By comparison with the conventional PI control method, the PR
control can introduce an infinite gain at the fundamental
frequency and hence can achieve zero steady-state error and the
grid current can be noticeable sinusoidal and current harmonics
generated by the nonlinear load will be compensated.
In order to examine the effectiveness of the suggested control, a
simulation using the Matlab/Simulink software has been done.
The simulation results confirm the validation of the presented
control and shows the efficiency of the PR controller especially
with respect to the harmonics created by the nonlinear load, which
proves that the use of this type of controller ensure a better energy
transport to grid with fewer harmonics.
KEYWORDS
PV System, Proportional Resonant PR, Proportional Integral PI,
VSI, Nonlinear Load, Grid.
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SCA '18, October 10–11, 2018, Tetouan, Morocco
© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6562-8/18/10…$15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3286606.3286799
1 INTRODUCTION
Photovoltaic (PV) systems are solar energy supply systems, which
either supply power directly to an electrical equipment or feed
energy into the public electricity grid.
These power systems assume a quality of energy, flexibility and
cost effectiveness. Also, the control voltage, the correction of the
power factor and harmonic filtering should be provided [1], [2].
Moreover, the connection of the photovoltaic system to the grid
generates some disruptions on the voltage and the current injected
into grid and during a variation load, fluctuations appear in the
voltage and in the output power, furthermore, when feeding a non-
linear load [3], harmonics appear in current and the studied
system becomes unstable. Consequently, the control of distributed
generation systems should be improved to meet the requirements
for grid interconnections. For these reasons, we need a current
controller that allows both the achievement of unity power factor
and the compensation of current harmonics and this paper gives
an overview on a comparison between PI and PR current
controllers of a grid-connected photovoltaic System under load
variation and under supplying non-linear load.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
introduces a description on the studied system. Section 3; explain
the philosophy of the proposed PR controller. Then, the obtained
results using Matlab/Simulink are presented in section 4. Finally,
conclusion is giving in section 5.
2 SYSTEM DESCRIPTIONS
In this paper, the design of a three-phase grid connected PV
system is presented and the block diagram of this presented work
is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of PV module, DC-DC boost
converter, DC-AC voltage source inverter, PWM generator,
Current controller and grid.

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SCA '18, October 10–11, 2018, Tetouan, Morocco S. ESSAGHIR et al.
ease of implementation, its simplicity and its good static and
PWM Current dynamic performances [10].
Generator Controller In our case, the three-level Voltage Source Inverter (VSI)
regulates DC bus voltage and keeps unity power factor under
variation load. In fact, the control system uses two control loops,
TR an external control loop, which regulates DC link voltage, and an
DC-DC
PV DC-AC internal loop which regulates active and reactive currents
Boost Grid
Panel Inverter components (Id and Iq). The output voltage of the converter and
Converter
the inverter is controlled by the PWM modulator [11], [12].

2.4 Current Controller

LOAD
Figure 1: Block diagram of PV system connected to grid
2.1 PV Panel
The PV array occurs of many cells connected in series and
parallel to provide needed output voltage and current; in this paper
the PV system consists of 66 strings of 5 series-connected
modules connected in parallel [4].
The DC/AC inverter is considered as the core of the whole
system; because of its important role in grid-connected operation.
For this reason the current controller can have a significant effect
on the quality of the current supplied to the grid by the PV
inverter, therefore, it is important that the controller provides a
high quality sinusoidal output by limiting the harmonics generated
by these inverters in order to avoid the adverse effects on the grid
power quality. For this reason, we compare in this study two types
of controllers: the conventional PI controller and the PR
controller.

The PV circuit model is based on the following equation:

3 PROPOSED CONTROLLER
V+Rs×I V+Rs×I
I = Ipv − Io *exp ( ) − 1+ − (1) The PR current controller GPR(s) is represented by the following
Vt×A Rp
equation:
s
Where:
GPR  K P  K I
Ipv : Photoelectric current (A) s  0 2
2
(2)
Io : Diode saturation current (A) Where, KP is the proportional gain term, KI is the integral gain
term and ω0 is the resonant frequency [13], [14].
Vt : Junction thermal voltage Vt = k×T The ideal resonant term on its own in the PR controller provides
q
q : Electron charge [1.602 × 10−19 C] an infinite gain at the ac frequency ω0 and no phase shift and gain
at the other frequencies [15]. The KP term determines the
k : Boltzmann constant [ 1.38 × 10−23 J/K] dynamics of the system; bandwidth, phase and gain margins.
Unfortunately, the ideal PR controller acts like a network with an
T : Cell temperature (K) infinite quality factor, which is hard to implement the PR
V : Terminal voltage (V) controller in reality. Firstly, the infinite gain introduced by PR
controller leads to an infinite quality factor, which cannot be
Rs : Cell series resistance (Ω) achieved in either analog or digital system.
Rp : Cell shunt resistance (Ω) Secondly, the gain of PR controller is much reduced at other
frequencies and it is no adequate to eliminate harmonic influence
A: Diode ideality factor
caused by grid voltage. Therefore, an approximating ideal (non-
The principal specifications for this model are given in Table 1.
ideal) PR controller, is given by (3), using a high-gain low-pass
filter is used to solve the problems mentioned above [16], [17].
2.2 DC-DC Converter
Equation (2) represents an ideal PR controller which can give
The proposed method for controlling the power factor consists of stability problems because of the infinite gain. To avoid these
two conversion systems; a boost converter and a voltage inverter problems, the PR controller can be made non-ideal by introducing
are used to ensure a good connection to grid and a better quality damping as shown in (3) below:
of the generated waves [5]–[9], in this study we resort to using a
boost converter.

2.3 Three phase inverter (DC-AC Converter) 2.s

GPR  K P  K I
To connect the PV system to the grid, we opted for a Neutral- s  2c .s  0 2
2
(3)
Point-Clamped three-level converter which has been chosen for its

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SCA '18, October 10–11, 2018, Tetouan, Morocco S. ESSAGHIR et al.
Where, ωc is the bandwidth around the ac frequency of ω0. By
using equation (3) the gain of the PR controller at the ac
frequency ω0 is now finite but it is still large enough to provide
only a very small steady state error. This equation also makes the
controller more easily realizable in digital systems due to their
finite precision[18].

4 SIMULATION RESULTS

The obtained results using Matlab/Simulink are discussed in this

section, Fig. 2 shows the full detailed model which contains a PV
array delivering to the grid a maximum power of 100 kW at 1000
W/m2 sun irradiance.

DC-AC Va Ia
Inverter
DC-DC Vb Ib Grid
Converter
Vdc Vc Ic

PV Panel PLL
MPPT
Algorithm PWM

abc θ abc
Load
dq dq
Vd Vq - Iq Id
+ + Iq_ref = 0 Vdc
Current
dq -
Regulator - -
abc + + + Vdc_ref
PI
Corrector

Figure 2: Full detailed model using Matlab/Simulink

The full detailed model contains:

A. Simulation under addition of the inductive and capacitive load
 PV array delivering a maximum power of 100 kW at
At time (t = 0.3s), we add an inductive load. Fig. 3.a shows that
1000 W/m2 sun irradiance.
when using a PI corrector, the reactive power Q becomes positive
 Boost converter increases voltage from PV voltage
and after a few milliseconds it retains its initial value, therefore,
(273.5 VDC at maximum power) to 500 VDC
by using the PR corrector, the reactive power always keeps its
 The MPPT controller that uses the P&O technique
value which is equal to zero which explains the single injection of
optimizes switching duty cycle of the boost converter.
the active power.
 1980 Hz three-level three-phase VSI. The VSI converts
the 500 VDC link voltages to 260 VAC and keeps unity
power factor.
 Current regulator, which provide a unity power factor
using the PI and PR regulators.
 100kVA, 260V/25kV three-phase coupling transformer.
 Grid specifications (25 kV distribution feeders and 120
kV equivalent transmission systems).

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SCA '18, October 10–11, 2018, Tetouan, Morocco
Figure 3.a: Active and reactive power with variation load by
using PI ad PR controller (Inductive Load)
Moreover, it is the same case when we add a capacitive load (as
its shown in Fig 3.b), by using a PR controller, the reactive power
always keeps its value which is equal to zero which explains the
single injection of the active power.
Figure 3.b: Active and reactive power with variation load by
using PI ad PR controller (Capacitve Load)
Fig. 4.a and Fig. 4.b show the frequency analysis of the grid
current and its THD value by using the PI and PR controller,
respectively.
The simulation results show that the Total Harmonic Distortion
(THD) of the PR controller is much less than that of the PI
controller, consequently the PR controller can track the sinusoidal
reference and mitigate the harmonics better than PI controller.
S. ESSAGHIR et al.
Figure 4.a: FFT analysis and THD value of grid current by
using PI controller
Figure 4.b: FFT analysis and THD value of grid current by
using PR controller
Therefore, the simulation gave us the expected results and the PR
corrector allows us to have a unit power factor despite the
addition of the reactive load and especially without influencing
the pace of the reactive power and without introducing any
instantaneous phase difference between the voltage and the
current injected into grid.
B. Simulation using non-linear load
Fig. 5.a and Fig. 5.b show the frequency analysis of the grid
current and its THD value while feeding a non-linear load by
using the PI and PR controller, respectively.
The simulation results show that when a non-linear load is
added, current harmonics are important with a high Total
Harmonic Distortion (THD) (36,07%), however, when using a
PR controller, the THD coefficient is much less (12,39 %) than
that of the PI controller, consequently the PR controller can track
the sinusoidal reference and reduce the harmonics better than PI
controller.
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SCA '18, October 10–11, 2018, Tetouan, Morocco S. ESSAGHIR et al.

4 CONCLUSION
In this paper, providing a better energy transport to the grid
consist on a comparison between conventional PI and PR current
controllers in grid-connected PV systems.
After the modeling of the three-phase grid connected PV systems,
the obtained results are satisfactory and show that the proposed
model with the PR controller correctly describes the dynamic
performance of the PV system studied. Consequently, this
corrector allows us to have a unit power factor despite the
addition of the reactive load and especially without influencing
the pace of the reactive power, moreover it can track the
sinusoidal reference and reduce the current harmonics better than
PI controller and ensure a better energy transport to the grid with
fewer harmonics.

Figure 5.a: FFT analysis and THD value of grid current by

using PI controller Under non-lineair load
5 APPENDIX

Table 1: Photovoltaic Parameters

Temperature T 25 °C

Open circuit voltage Voc 64.2 V

Short circuit current Isc 5.96 A

Voltage, maximum power Vmax 54.7 V

Current, maximum power Imax 5.58 A

Maximum power Pmax 305 W

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Figure 5.b: FFT analysis and THD value of grid current by
using PR controller Under non-lineair load
For these reasons, these figures show the importance of the choice
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a single injection of the active power and to keep always a unity
power factor despite variation load. Most importantly, in the case
of non-linear load, the use of this kind of corrector helps to reduce
the current harmonics better than PI controller.
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