Design and control of resilient micro-inverter system

Abstract

The growing implications of climate change have created an increasing demand for clean and renewable energy sources. Solar photovoltaics (PV) are increasingly popular as an alternative energy source due to the fact that they produce clean and renewable power with zero operating emissions. However, PV industries are facing issues of unreliability and low product life spans for the connected inverters. These issues can hinder the future growth of the industry. The aim of this research was therefore to design a micro-inverter system with improved resiliency for grid connected applications. The thesis is broken into the Inverter phase and the Resiliency phase. The Inverter phase consisted of the design of two inverters: a 300W micro-inverter and a 600W inverter simulated in PSIM. The Resiliency phase focused on the application of the designed inverters into four case studies for improving the resiliency of a PV system. It was found that placing an extra micro-inverter in parallel to the overall system was the most cost effective design with a high efficiency.