Intelligent Control of Solar Inverter for Grid Power Factor Enhancement through STATCOM Operation

Abstract

In this research paper, the key contribution is to design a new control algorithm so that we can use PV Inverter as a STATCOM thereby maintaining PCC Voltage and achieving the power factor correction of the grid. This PV Inverter has three modes of operation: PV-Mode, STATCOM-Mode & Partial PV-Mode. In PV-Mode the inverter will generate only the active power and the grid supplies the reactive power needed for the load. In STATCOM- Mode the inverter will use its full resources to exchange the dynamic reactive power need of the grid for critical conditions in the power system, while in partial PV Mode it will generate active power as well as reactive power. Instead of using conventional P-Q control, here the controller is designed combining the DC-link voltage and PCC Voltage controllers. The detailed modeling of the controllers are done in MATLAB SIMULINK