Masudul Haider Imtiaz et. al.

/ International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology

Vol. 2(12), 2010, 7524-7530

DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION OF AN

INTELLIGENT SOLAR HYBRID
INVERTER IN GRID ORIENTED
SYSTEM FOR UTILIZING PV ENERGY
MASUDUL HAIDER IMTIAZ*, MST.RUMANA AKTAR SUMI, KAZI RIZWANA MEHZABEEN
Department of Applied Physics, Electronics & Communication Engineering
University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
masudul4145@gmail.com*
MD.ISTIAQ MAHBUB, NAFISA SHAHERA NUR
Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering
Ahsanullah University of Science & Technology
Dhaka, Bangladesh
tarango@gmail.com
Abstract:
This paper demonstrates the implementation of a prototype of IPS (instant power supply) system to ensure
continuous output current to load in residential application utilizing both Photovoltaic (PV) energy and AC
Grid. Utility interfacing PWM inverter designed here to operate by both solar energy and storage batteries that
highly satisfies the necessity in rural areas where National Grids are hardly available and power cut problem
reduces the effectiveness of IPS. Solar energy gets priority here to charge storage battery rather than AC source
that may save hundreds of mega watts power every day. To extend the battery lifetime and keep system
components hazard-free, it includes exact battery-level sensing, charging-current controlling by microcontroller
unit (MCU) and a cumulative DC/AC MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) charging to congregate
maximum PV energy from AC Solar Modules. Investigation on improvement of power-interfacing control and
optimization of overall system operation assent to intend usage recommendation in this exposition. Computer
simulations and experiment results show the validity of this proposed system to have high power conversion
efficiency and low harmonic distortions.
Keywords: Charge controller; Grid; inverter; PWM; Solar energy.

1. Introduction
Gigantic population and comprehensive electrical energy consumption have made power crisis one of the
gravest national problems in the developing countries like Bangladesh. Excessive demand of power is always
difficult to meet and as a result national economy is being hampered severely due to this deregulation of
electricity. Alternative power sources that can deliver output currents in absence of grid supply are now
automatic choices in home grid-connected system. In urban areas, IPS (Instant Power Supply) system is being
used massively to cope up with load shedding. But in the large context, it is worsening the situation roughly
since it consumes huge power from grid to charge its storage battery. Unfortunately most IPS system has poor
charge controlling mechanism which makes it a massive power consumer. Now-a-days, the practical cost of
solar panel and the consumers awareness to preserve AC power have stimulated the demands of high effective
Grid connected power sources.
Starting from the utilization of solar energy and digital power conversion application, this paper
demonstrates such a solution of implementing PV energy in existing isolated IPS system. When AC main fails,
inverter section will provide uninterrupted AC power supply which should be maintained by the storage
batteries. These storage batteries will be charged efficiently by the solar source(s) when sunlight is available
regardless of the AC line status. While, in dark night or cloudy weather AC grid source will charge the batteries.
These are schematically represented in Table 1. Since PV array of medium capability has been used in this
prototype, usage of PV energy here are only restricted to charge the battery and being miniature amount,
harvested AC will not be reflected to Grid which is left open for future.

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Table 1. Planning and configurations of proposed system

AC supply

Solar Availability

Inverter input

Inverter o/p socket

Battery Charged by

present
present

No
Yes

AC direct
AC direct

AC
Solar

absent
absent

Yes
No

Battery
Battery

Harvested AC
Harvested AC

Solar

So far, most of the recent commercial IPS system is the composition of PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) type
inverter, storage battery & inverter-cum-charger transformer regardless of the concern for overload,
overcharging or low battery cut problems. Exact voltage level sensing and battery-charge controlling are also
unavailable. These phenomena result in degradation of battery lifetime and in the same time huge wastage of
power and extends electricity bill. So, intelligent modification is needed in the existing IPS system. The
proposed system utilizes a MCU (microcontroller unit) to successfully overcome these tribulations. Moreover,
due to limited sunshine hours and non-ideal conditions [2], it is not only desired to accumulate maximum PV
energy from panels but also to ensure maximum utilization. Therefore, a superior technique like MPPT is
employed here to match the output of the solar panels with the battery voltage to ensure maximum charge. Out
of this consideration, a usage recommendation has been made in section VI. The designed system has been
rigorously tested in extremely harsh environments to ensure reliable, trouble-free operation regardless of any
change in climate. Hence, new research directions are explored for the utilization of solar energy, electrical
engineering development and power electronics technology.
2. Description
The proposed system schematically showed in Fig. 1 basically consists of three tiers: a) Input power section, b)
Intelligent processing section and c) Output power section. The core part of this system is the intelligent
switching circuit which is composed of PIC 16f876A based MCU unit which ensure uninterrupted output power
based on the available input. This pre-programmed section intelligently not only maintains maximum AC output
power with greater efficiency but also DC supply to small DC load that may reduce pressure of AC output. The
following sub-sections give the details of entire system.
2.1. Input Power and Switching Section
Input power section allows three different sources of energy like grid line, storages battery and Photovoltaic
energy (controlled by MPPT charge controller). To minimize the burden on the grid line, the system is designed
as follows: when Grid supply is present, switching circuitry gets informed about its availability from AC main
sensing section and passes AC mains signal to inverter output socket. In absence of AC grid supply, switching
circuitry takes DC input from storage battery and turns on inverter circuit i.e. composition of oscillator, MOS
driver, output amplifier and transformer section and AC low-pass filter. Oscillator section generates 50 Hz MOS
driver signal that gets amplified, sent to inverter transformer using MOSFET switching and transforms into AC
and injects AC energy to the AC-side output connection. Such periodical switching ON/OFF of MOSFET starts
an alternating current with 50Hz frequency at primary winding of step-up transformer that results in 220V AC
supply at the secondary winding. All these functionalities are done here by implementing PIC 16f876A MCU
unit that resembles the change-over section of commercial IPS section implementing by analog circuitry.

Fig .1 Block Diagram of Proposed IPS System

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2.2. Intelligent Processing and Battery Charging Section
In absence of solar energy, it is mandatory to use AC mains to charge storage battery. But, in daytime, it prefers
solar energy to AC grid in battery charging for power saving purposes. To ensure maximum possible PV energy,
some intelligence is applied in this proposed system. With a regular charge controller, if the batteries are low at
say 12.4 volts, then a 100 watt solar panel rated at 6 amps at 16.5 volts (6 amps times 16.5 volts = 100 watts)
will only charge at 6 amps times 12.4 volts or just 75 watts, losing 25% of panels capacity. Proposed MPPT in
this case compensates for the lower battery voltage by delivering closer to 8 amps into the 12.4 volt battery
maintaining the full power of the 100 watt solar panel. The intelligent charging section involves three level of
charging like absorption level charging, bulk level charging and float charging. A bulk level charging is
maintained for initializing charging process for a discharged battery. When Battery voltage exceeds a critical
level, charge controller maintains adsorption level charging. A full charged battery gets only float level charging
that maintains trickling current (i.e. one tenth of full charge current) causes available solar energy being unused.
2.3. Output Power section
Implementing such configuration described in previous section, maximum utilization of photovoltaic energy is
not yet confirmed practically. In semi-urban areas, where load-shedding are not much frequent, almost 80% of
available solar energy are being left unused. To utilize such power, this system contains an output pin that
supplies additional DC power to small loads likes in mobile charging application, DC fan, DC light, DC iron,
electric filters etc. This output DC power is obviously regulated in MPPT charge controller section to ensure
safe and maximum usages. Here we also implemented a fine adjuster of output DC voltage level to power large
possible and even tiny loads. A voltmeter is also integrated for this purpose at the output section to make this as
user-friendly as possible.
3. Implementation of MPPT Section
Unlike the applications of space programs, significant solar radiation power is filtered and blocked by the
atmosphere and cloud before it is received at the earth surface, which dramatically affects the available
insulation for photovoltaic generators. The operation of MPPT is to adjust photovoltaic interfaces so that the
operating characteristics of the load and the photovoltaic array match at the maximum power point (MPP)
considering some criteria like cell temperature, shadowing etc. Here Photovoltaic voltage is a preferable control
variable in case of MPPT since current is heavily dependent of weather conditions. The study [2] shows that the
photovoltaic current value at MPP is close to 86% of the short-circuit current. Because the photovoltaic current
dramatically varies with insulation, the transient response of MPPT can occasionally cause the photovoltaic
current to reach its saturation point, which is the short-circuit current. This should be prevented because its
nonlinearity causes a sudden voltage drop and results in power losses. However, for the regulation of PV
voltage, the voltage saturations can easily be avoided because a controller knows the operating range is bounded
about 70%82% of the open-circuit voltage [2, 3]. Furthermore, a good-quality measurement of voltage signal is
cheaper and easier than that of current measurement. Here, MPPT is utilized to ensure maximum gain when
battery voltage is low. During the lower voltage period, this MPPT charge controller provides the extra power to
recharge the battery. In normal operating environment, it forces to operate at battery voltage and not Vmp,
modules maximum power. Here, operating voltage always maintains at 11.5-14.5 V showed in I-V
characteristics of Fig.2 that can be slightly varied system to system. Fig.2 also clarify the advantages of MPPT
charging over non-MPPT charging.

Fig.2 I-V characteristics of MPPT charge controller system

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3.1. MPPT circuit description

This circuit utilizes a power BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor) that works like a step-down converter. The circuit
operation can be divided into two modes. Mode 1 begins when transistor is switched on. The input current
which rises flowing through filter inductor, filter capacitor and load battery. And Mode 2 begins when transistor
is switched off. The freewheeling diode conducts due to energy being stored; inductor current continues to flow
through inductor, capacitor and load. Diode current falls until transistor is switched on again in the next cycle.
Here switching frequency is 25 KHz. Inductor should be 160uH that was measured using following calculations:
L = { Va(Vs-Va)} / f Vs ( peak to peak ripple current)

(1)

Here, Vs=Input voltage, Va= required input voltage, f=frequency. And capacitor is 200 F. The Equation is
C = peak to peak ripple current / 8f peak to peak ripple voltage

(2)

In this circuit the main intelligence is to measure the voltage of PV supply and battery immediately when the
transistor is being switched off. For this, switching duty cycle would be measured from following equation and
well-configured transistors should be used according to exact duty cycle. If k is the duty factor, then:
Va=kVs or, k=Va/Vs

(3)

4. Working Circuit
Proposed system is such an online system that the inverter should always run if a load is connected. A lot of
configuration is deployed here for switching MOSFET (metaloxidesemiconductor field-effect transistorIRFZ44N) [4,5,6]. A combination of two transistor pair like BC547, a NPN Transistor and BC557, another PNP
Transistor is used for safety that can ensure security for avoid miss pulse which cause the damage of MOSFET.
Additional diode, resistance and non-polar capacitor are also used for proper biasing of MOSFET (Fig.3). Since
maximum focus should be given to avoid the damage of MOSFET. In Bangladesh, almost every load is running

Fig .3 Circuit Diagram of Proposed IPS System

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in 50Hz system. Also, an iron-core type center-tapped transformer is implemented here. So, switching of
MOSFETs at 50Hz i.e. at 20 ms is needed. So the first half cycle would be 10 ms and then another half cycle
would be 10ms. This system always keeps checking output voltage. When output voltage is noticed greater than
220V, by controlling switching of MOSFET and at the same time, minimizing the percentage of duty cycle
output current can be controlled. Again when output voltage less than 220V, it can be controlled by rising the
percentage of duty cycle. In this way, the output is always restricted to be fixed at 220V. This is called modified
sine wave. And thats how the inverter efficiency is proved greater than the normal square wave inverter [7]. Its
efficiency goes to almost 83-85%. It has also overload-protection system and when the load is crossed over its
limited value, this system cuts its load and show overload in its LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). For this
purposes, a 4 line LCD is engaged here to display highest 80 characters at a time. Here, an arrangement for
showing the Bat voltage, Percentage of Voltage available, percentage of load, solar voltage, available solar
energy etc is implemented using MCU to make this system user friendly. (Details circuit description is omitted.)
5. Software Flowchart
The entire procedure done by the proposed system may be described in a software flowchart shown in Fig.4 that
schematically reflects the facilities provided by it. The whole work is being monitored by MCU that controls the
Begin

Yes

Yes

Switch
Solar
Power

Solar
Present ?

AC
Present
?

No

AC
present
?

Switch
DC
inverter

No

Yes

Switch
AC inverter

Goto

Start MPPT

Start

Maintain Float Charging

& Bypass remaining DC
Power to output

VBAT >
full
charge ?

Maintain Bulk
Level Charging

1hour

Maintain Absorption
Level Charging

VBAT>
Bulk
level?

Fig .4 Software Flowchart of Proposed System

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switching action and exact voltage level charging. Based on available charges in storage battery, MCU unit
switches three-layer charging i.e. Bulk level charging when battery voltage is less than 80%, Absorption level
charging when charge is between 80-99% and Float level charging when battery is in full charged state. It is
suggested to employ absorption level charging for 1 hour to achieve best performance of it. This system
indicates that MPPT charging section employs for both Photovoltaic energy and AC supply. Grids AC is
always recommended to use after filtration not directly. So, MPPT charging is also needed in such case of usage
of AC from National Grid in Bangladesh. Inverter section is being decided intelligently to switch according to
the availability of Grid supply. In presence of AC main, MCU will switch on AC inverter portion and in
absence, it will turn on DC inverter being run by solar PV energy.
6. Key Features and applications
This complete system schematic includes the feature of easy installation, maintenance free use, no requirement
of fuel or lubricant, stainless steel hardware, built-in over-load, over-charge, low voltage protection, temperature
compensated charging and low battery disconnect facility. Moreover, it ensures maximum continuous power at
full load and simultaneously pollution free and noiseless maintenance. Furthermore it has the ability to charge
the battery in low voltage so it will get sufficient backup in case of power failure.
7. Consideration of Usage
Non-ideal conditions like photovoltaic ageing, low solar radiation, dust collection, slightest shading of any tiny
portion of any module cause significant reduction in peak power in adjacent series modules (almost 15%). To
avoid such degradation in performance, this system follows the parallel module combination with DC/AC
MPPT module [2] with anti-islanding function to continually sense grid status and power quality of solar
generation and to disconnect the system from the grid in case of any islanding problem described in [2].
7.1. Ratings of use
Before using IPS, one needs to determine how much power he needs to pick the appropriate-sized system. Table
2 gives the consumer an idea about that. When connecting inverter to line, the most important thing to consider
is that, total load should not exceed the capacity of the inverter as most devices require higher current during
their switching-on period. Commercial IPS always recommended limiting the usage load of the 80 % capacity.
If overload occurs, then the proposed inverter will cut-off the output and wait for user to reduce some load from
it and press the reset key. Table 2 proves the effectiveness of the prototype system in terms of cost and back-up
time that may be compared to other commercial IPS systems.
Table 2. Proposed system provided back-up time and cost with panel and battery

Capacity

400VA
600VA
1000VA
1500VA
2000VA

Connected load
( 4 tube light - 40W, 56 Fan 60W; 21 color TV- 75 W)
4 Tubes+1 fan/Alternate combination
4 Tubes +2 fan +1 TV / Alternate
8 Tubes + 4 fan+1 TV / Alternate
10 Tubes+ 7 fan+1 TV / Alternate
15 Tubes+10 fan+1 TV / Alternate

Backup time

4Hr
3Hr
3Hr
2Hr
2Hr

Battery

100AH
130AH
165AH
200AH
220AH

Estimated
cost (total)
$ 700
$ 850
$ 1500
$ 2100
$ 2600

Solar panel

400W
500W
1000W
1400W
1800W

7.2. Application
Due to gradual decrease in the installation price and as a safe and easy-to-install unit, this complete stand alone
solar IPS system will provide more comfort to household or office appliances like Light, Fan, TV, Video Player,
Audio-Player, Fax and PABX. Only it is required to mount solar panels and enclosure and connect them to the
electrical accessories. Besides rural habitation, the proposed system might be used to meet power requirement of
Business centers, Medical facility departments & testing labs, in security systems, railroad signaling, wireless
data transmission, irrigation control, navigational aids, flow monitoring, lighting, UHF/ VHF radio and tower
beacons etc. Table 3 indicates that the power saving measured in a day (available 10 hours solar energy) by
utilizing the DC output power generated directly from MPPT controller that is supposed to utilize unused PV
energy by powering small load like charger fan, electric heater, mobile charger, bulbs etc. Table 3 also ensures
that almost 545 Watt power can be saved everyday that may save 18 KW power monthly from a small family.

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Table 3. Proposition of a power-saving approaches using the proposed system

System used for

Used time

Using normal system

consumption

Proposed system ( Consumed

Energy) Direct From solar

Charger Fan (15 Watt)

10 Hr

150 Watt

0 Watt

Electric filter (25Watt)

10Hr

250 Watt

0 Watt

Mobile charger (4.5 Watt)

10Hr

45 Watt

0 Watt

Energy saving bulb (10 Watt)

10 hr

100 Watt

0 Watt

8. Conclusion
Proposed hybrid IPS system could be the ideal solution during main grid failure. It has many distinct features
over the conventional generators. This precession IPS is designed according to our power line characteristics.
Usages of this system ensures, no matter what location or application, safe and reliable generation of electricity
to power our equipments anywhere the sun shines, even under the most hazardous conditions. Also, it can
provide AC supply with high quality backup in emergency needs during power cuts. These isolated inverters are
more likely to get attentions for gigantic applications that demands huge power. High capacity solar panels and
large sized batteries are only needed to provide that support without any moderation of our proposed system.
9. References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]

M.Lotia, P.Nair. Modern digital Inverter: Bpb publications,2nd edition New delhi,India, pp.27.
W.Xiao,N.Ozog R,W.G.Dunfold (2007). Topology Study of Photovoltaic Interface for Maximum Power Point Tracking: IEEE
transaction on Industrial Electronics, vol. 54, no. 3, june 2007
C.Hua, C.Shen. Study of Maximum Power Tracking technique and control of DC/DC converters for Photovolataic Power Syste: Power
Electronics Specialists Conference,1998. IEEE. PESC 1998
F.Shinjo, K.Wada, T. Shimizu. A single phase Grid-connected inverter with a power decoupling function : Power Electronics
Specialists Conference,2007. IEEE. PESC 2007.
IEEE Recommended practice for Utility Interface of Photovoltaic (PV) Systems, IEEE Std 929-2000, Jan. 2000.
David A. Bell, Electronic Devices & Circuits, Prentice-Hall India, Fourth Edition.
Microchip: Intelligent power supply design solutions. Available: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/01240a.pdf

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