Power Quality Improvement of 3-phase Solar Energy Conversion System using MOFSE

In this work, a 3-phase grid-connected solar energy conversion system is presented, which performs multiple tasks such as mitigation of harmonics and DC offset, reactive power compensation of the nonlinear load, and offers a high power factor at the utility end. A Multi Order Fundamental Signal Extractor (MOFSE) based filtering technique is proposed to achieve the said objective. In this work, a water pumping system is considered as load, which delivers water under rated conditions, irrespective of the solar energy generation. To achieve this, the pump requires constant power input. If the solar power generation exceeds the pump need, the excess power is fed into the grid. In case of deficit generation, the pump draws the remaining power from the grid. Testing of the system is carried out in MATLAB/Simulink environment with varying solar irradiance and highly contaminated grid voltage conditions. The grid current THD is ensured to be as per the IEEE 519-2014 standard.