Harmonic Stability Assessment of Commercially Available Single-Phase Photovoltaic Inverters Considering Operating-Point Dependencies

Abstract

The growth of renewables in the energy sector, e.g., in public low-voltage networks, leads to an increasing share of installed power electronic devices, e.g., inverters for photovoltaic applications. To rely on these devices, suitable analyses have to be performed. This includes studies of the device stability in the harmonic frequency range, i.e., above 50 Hz up to 2 kHz. State-of-the-art time-domain studies for harmonic stability analyses require detailed knowledge about the inverter design. Black-box studies must identify the inverter characteristics in the laboratory, which can differ depending on specific operating points, i.e., specific operating powers. This study analyzes the operating-point dependency of inverters on the critical inductance values of the network impedance, e.g., the inductances at which the inverter is expected to become unstable. Measurements are performed for three operating powers of an unknown, commercially available single-phase inverter to validate the critical inductances. Two further commercially available inverters and four simulative implementations are analyzed as well with regard to the critical inductance and the critical frequency. The results demonstrate the importance of considering a representative range of operating powers of the inverter for the small-signal stability analysis.

Keywords

• converters
• harmonic stability
• inverters
• measurements
• power electronics
• power quality