Title: PSO-based solutions to selective harmonic elimination in stand-alone photovoltaic inverters

Authors: Mohamed Azab

Addresses: Electrical Engineering Technology Department, Benha High Institute of Technology, Benha University, P.O. Box 13512, Benha-Kalubiyah, Egypt; Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Yanbu Industrial College-YIC, P.O. Box 30436, Yanbu AL-Sinaiyah, Saudi Arabia

Abstract: This paper presents accurate particle swarm optimisation (PSO) based-solutions for nonlinear equations of selective harmonic elimination technique to be used in single-phase stand-alone photovoltaic inverters. The proposed PSO-based method computes efficiently the required switching angles of inverter control signals to eliminate low order harmonics up to the 15th from the inverter voltage waveform while maintaining the amplitude of the fundamental harmonic at the desired value. The proposed method is investigated for unipolar and bipolar switching patterns. Problem formulation, selected objective function, and the obtained set of solution are presented. In addition, the obtained solution is evaluated by computing the resultant harmonic spectrum. The results prove that the PSO algorithm converges successfully to the global solution faster than other algorithms such as genetic algorithms and ant colony. Moreover, the PV inverter system is studied through a circuit based model using Sim Power System/Matlab. According to the obtained results, the method is applicable to stand-alone PV inverters.

Keywords: particle swarm optimisation; PSO; selective harmonic elimination; SHE; voltage source inverters; VSI; pulse width modulation; uniploar PWM; bipolar PWM; photovoltaic arrays; photovoltaic cells; solar cells.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRET.2010.032186

International Journal of Renewable Energy Technology, 2010 Vol.1 No.3, pp.301 - 324

Received: 24 May 2009
Accepted: 11 Oct 2009
Published online: 15 Mar 2010 *

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