Universal Circuit Breaker for PV power plants

Abstract

This work is focuses on the study and the development of a Circuit Breaker (CB) for photovoltaic applications according with the state of the art and standards. The proposed CB is composed by a Solid State Power Controller (SSPC) and a dedicated Digital Signal Processing (DSP) for the real time protection. The DSP communicate via CAN BUS with the main computer to set the protection curve and to remotely open/close the switch. The work has been focused on the measurement of the intervention time of each protection level and the measurement of the execution time of the firmware coded in the fixed point Q15 format.