Voltage regulation by grid connected PV-STATCOM

Abstract

The environmental protection aspect promoted the use of renewable energies at a faster rate over the last decade. Among all the renewable energy sources one of the most popular one is solar energy source. The application of these sources to the grid requires additional compensating devices for mitigate the power quality problems and ensure voltage stability. The flexible AC transmission system includes various compensating devices. This paper deals with the utilization of solar PV farm inverter as a static compensator (STATCOM) to regulate voltage at the point of connection which improves the stability both during day and night time. The solar PV farm normally generates real power during the day but remains inactive at the night time. The proposed PV solar system working as a STATCOM is known as PV-STATCOM. This scheme uses total capacity of inverter during night time and that remaining after real power production during day for carrying out various STATCOM operations. The entire system modeling and analysis are done on a single machine system having midpoint connected PV- STATCOM using MATLAB/SIMULINK.