LAUSR

This paper focuses on the control of large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic system. The proposed system is composed of two conversion stages: the first stage contains four PV arrays, each one connected to an individual DC/DC converter (boost converter), while the second stage is a five-level neutral point clamped (NPC) inverter tied to the grid. Each DC-link capacitor input of the NPC inverter is connected to the output of the DC/DC boost converter. In order to enhance the energy harvesting capability of the proposed system, different controllers based on finite-set model predictive control (FS-MPC) are developed and presented. A fast voltage-oriented maximum power point tracking performed by FS-MP current controller (FS-MPCC) is investigated and applied for each boost converter to maximize the produced power from each PV array. Furthermore, a FS-MPC algorithm is proposed to control the centralized five-level NPC inverter. The purposes of the developed controllers are: track the MPP rapidly and accurately under sudden irradiation changes, ensure the balance of the four DC-link capacitor voltages whatever the difference between the extracted powers from each PV system unit, inject the reactive power demanded by the grid operator and also minimize the switching frequency of the five-level NPC inverter. The results obtained through MATLAB/Simulink and Simpower toolbox packages prove that the proposed control scheme provides better performance in comparison with conventional control scheme. Moreover, a high grid current quality and perfect DC-link capacitor voltages balancing are ensured under contrast of extract powers from each PV system.