Abstract
Grid integration of photovoltaic (PV) inverters has been increasing in the past decade. As a result of the uncertainties introduced with high penetrations of PV, better monitoring and control of the PV inverters becomes crucial for improving overall system stability. This paper focuses on the communications capability of the inverter controller and on enabling interoperability. Multiple standards are available to enable interoperability in PV inverters. In this paper, an interoperable controller, enabled by Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3) communications protocols, is developed for a grid-connected, three-phase PV inverter. The DNP3 server for the PV inverter is programmed on the real-time layer of the field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based inverter controller. Set points for advanced inverter control functions, such as volt/VAr curves, ride-through curves, are sent from a DNP3 client, a simulated distribution management system application, to the PV inverter through DNP3. This communications capability of the inverter controller is validated using a controller-hardware-in-the-loop experimental setup. The code developed to achieve the interoperability is available in the public domain through open-source software licensing. This interoperability will enable smoother grid integration of smart PV inverters with advanced grid-support functions as well as allow better monitoring and control of PV inverters for grid stability.
Original language | American English |
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Pages | 2072-2077 |
Number of pages | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2019 |
Event | 46th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, PVSC 2019 - Chicago, United States Duration: 16 Jun 2019 → 21 Jun 2019 |
Conference
Conference | 46th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, PVSC 2019 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Chicago |
Period | 16/06/19 → 21/06/19 |
Bibliographical note
See NREL/CP-5D00-73131 for preprintNREL Publication Number
- NREL/CP-5D00-76331
Keywords
- advanced grid-support functions
- Distributed Network Protocol
- DNP3
- interoperability
- PV inverter