A NEW TOPOLOGY FOR REACTIVE POWER COMPENSATION IN SMART GRID

Grid-tied solar inverters are designed to generate power at unity power factor which means that they can produce active power only. The reactive power requirement of the load is catered by the grid only. As we know that with a sudden increase in the deployment of renewable-based Distributed Energy Resources, reactive power drawn from the grid as compared to active power has been increased considerably. This affects the power quality of the grid. If the grid-tied solar inverter is made smart in terms of supplying reactive power, in addition to active power, the grid has to supply lesser reactive power. To maintain proper synchronization between PV and grid system a suitable controller is designed for the inverter. For this purpose, this work proposes an SVM controller for PV inverter to mitigate the system voltage fluctuations. Also, this method considers the loss associated with reactive power production. Simulations results are presented to assess the voltage regulation characteristics under different load conditions.