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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2013

One-Cycle-Controlled Single-Stage Single-Phase

Voltage-Sensorless Grid-Connected PV System
Sreeraj E. S., Kishore Chatterjee, Member, IEEE, and Santanu Bandyopadhyay

AbstractReforms in the electricity sector along with various

renewable-energy-promotion policies have increased the importance of small grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems utilizing
single-stage single-phase inverters. Ruggedness, reliability, and
cost effectiveness are the desirable characteristics of such inverters
used in distributed low-power applications. Schemes based on
one-cycle control (OCC) which do not require the service of a
phase-locked loop for interfacing the inverter to the grid are
increasingly being employed for such applications. However, the
OCC-based schemes reported earlier require sensing of the grid
voltage which somewhat offsets one of the inherent strengths of
OCC-based systems. In an effort to overcome the aforementioned
limitation, an OCC-based grid-connected single-stage PV system
is proposed in this paper which does not require to sense the
grid voltage. Further, it requires less number of sensors (two) as
compared to that required (four) in the earlier reported scheme
for the implementation of the core controller comprising of OCC
and maximum-power-point-tracking blocks. The viability of the
proposed scheme is confirmed by performing simulation and experimental validation.
Index TermsMaximum-power-point tracking (MPPT),
one-cycle control (OCC), photovoltaic (PV) inverter, single-phase
grid-connected inverter.

I. I NTRODUCTION

NVIRONMENTALLY benign technologies like solar

photovoltaic (PV)-based systems are increasingly being
used for electricity production in the context of global warming,
climate change, and rapid exhaustion of fossil fuels. A portion
of the huge gap between the expected demand and availability
of the electricity produced in many parts of the world, particularly in developing countries, is expected to be met from
renewable energy sources like solar PV. Moreover, effort to
reduce carbon emission from electricity sector has forced policy makers across the globe to promote electricity production
from renewable energy sources based on solar PV. Further, the
renewable-energy-promotion policies across different parts of
the globe, like feed-in tariff, renewable portfolio standard, net
metering, etc. [1], are providing considerable incentives even
Manuscript received September 26, 2011; revised January 15, 2012; accepted
March 11, 2012. Date of publication May 3, 2012; date of current version
October 16, 2012. This work was supported in part by Ministry of New and
Renewable Energy, Government of India.
Sreeraj E. S. is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India (e-mail: sreerajes@
gmail.com).
K. Chatterjee is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and National
Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education, Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India (e-mail: kishore@ee.iitb.ac.in).
S. Bandyopadhyay is with the Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India (e-mail:
santanu@me.iitb.ac.in).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2012.2191755

to individual single-phase customers to install solar PV panels

and sell the excess power generated to the utility. A reliable and
low-cost single-phase grid-connected inverter which requires
little maintenance has become the order of the day for interfacing such low-capacity systems to grid.
A typical grid-connected PV system has more than one
power-processing stages [2], [3]. The first stage is usually a
dcdc converter which draws peak available power from the
solar array by incorporating maximum-power-point tracking
(MPPT) and also provides a boost in the dc-link-voltage level.
The output of this stage is inverted using single- or multiplestage dcac inverters before feeding to the grid [3], [4]. The
inverter control ensures that whatever amount of power is
extracted from the solar array is being dumped on the grid
which is achieved indirectly by maintaining the dc-link voltage at a set reference. The reliability, compactness, and cost
effectiveness of the PV system can be improved by employing a
single-stage dcac inverter [4][10]. The reliability of a singlestage PV system operating in hard-switched mode has been
objectively shown to be more than that of two-stage systems
in [11]. Unlike the two-stage systems, inverter in a single-stage
system performs the following two functions: 1) extracts peak
available power from the solar array by employing a proper
MPPT algorithm and 2) dumps the power derived from the solar
array on the grid by maintaining the power-quality discipline
of the utility. Hence, the control configuration of single-stageinverter-based grid-connected systems generally consists of two
current-control loops. A fast inner current controller regulates
the current injected to the grid while maintaining prescribed
total harmonic distortion (THD) and power factor, while a slow
outer current-control loop incorporates the MPPT algorithm
employed.
In order to interface the inverter with the grid, service of a
phase-locked loop (PLL) is required. Designing a PLL for interfacing with a weak grid is always a difficult proposition considering the nonidealities like frequency variation and harmonic
distortions present in the line voltages [12]. Moreover, the PLL
routine consumes considerable computational resources of the
digital signal processor (DSP) employed for its realization. In
an effort to simplify the control structure of grid-connected
inverters in a PV system, schemes based on one-cycle control
(OCC) have been proposed [4], [5]. Systems based on OCC
do not require the service of a PLL [13][15]. In addition to
this, they offer fast dynamic response due to the presence of the
current-control loop [16].
A single-stage single-phase OCC-based inverter for gridconnected PV system which can operate at a maximum-power
point is reported in [5]. The performance of this scheme in

0278-0046/$31.00 2012 IEEE

SREERAJ E. S. et al.: ONE-CYCLE-CONTROLLED VOLTAGE-SENSORLESS GRID-CONNECTED PV SYSTEM

tracking the maximum power from the solar array is very sensitive to the set of design parameters chosen for the realization of
the controller. Hence, maximum-power-point operation is not
guaranteed if there are changes in operating conditions and/or
drift in the values of control and system parameters due to
ageing. In order to overcome the aforementioned limitation, the
values of the control parameters are obtained in [9] by using
a multiobjective optimization procedure which extracts the
highest average power for a given insolation range. However,
the scheme reported in [9] makes the system operate closer but
not at the point of maximum-power operating point (MPOP) for
the designed range of insolation. In order to address the aforementioned problem, a customized perturb and observe (P&O)
method for tracking the maximum-power point is applied to an
OCC-based scheme so that the system operates at MPOP even
if there is a variation in the insolation level and parameter values
[4]. The controller of the scheme presented in [4] needs to sense
grid voltage, grid current, and dc-link voltage. It also needs
to sense the PV current to realize the MPPT algorithm. The
sensing of the grid voltage somewhat reduces the basic strength
of the OCC-based strategy in a sense that harmonic distortions
present in the grid voltage would affect the control performance
of the system. Moreover, the presence of a number of sensors
increases the complexity and thereby reduces the reliability
of the system. In an effort to overcome the aforementioned
limitations, an OCC-based single-stage PV system is proposed
in this paper which does not require sensing of the grid
voltage.
The scheme proposed in this paper estimates information
regarding grid voltage from a fundamental component of the
inverter output voltage. The fundamental component of the
inverter output voltage is derived by processing the inverter
switching function and the dc-link voltage through an analog
filter and a saturator. The idea of estimating the grid voltage or
virtual flux, utilizing the switching function of the inverter, grid
currents, and dc-link voltage, has been earlier applied in case of
three-phase converters using direct power control [17][19] and
direct torque control [20] and, less commonly, for single-phase
rectifiers [21]. Although, philosophically, the method presented
in this paper is similar to the aforementioned schemes, the
method proposed in this paper is different in the following
respects. In the proposed scheme, the implementation of the
inverter-output-voltage estimator is quite simple and has been
realized by involving simple analog circuits. The process of
estimation is quite involved in case of grid-voltage estimators
reported in [17][21]. While the proposed scheme estimates the
fundamental component of the inverter output voltage, all the
earlier methods estimate the grid voltage. Hence, those schemes
require the value of the filter inductor used and the grid current
to carry out estimation. Therefore, a mismatch in the inductor
value affects the operation of those schemes. The proposed
scheme is not affected by this problem.
Further, the proposed controller requires less number of
sensors (two) as compared to that required (four) in [4] for the
implementation of the core controller comprising of OCC and
MPPT blocks. In addition to this, the core controller used in the
proposed scheme is realized through a simple analog controller.
The operating principle of the scheme is discussed in detail in

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Fig. 1. Single-stage single-phase grid-connected PV system.

Fig. 2. Phasor model of the grid-connected system.

Section II. The issues pertaining to the realization of the MPPT

routine is presented in Section III. Detailed simulation studies
are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed
scheme, while the viability of the scheme has been ascertained
by performing experimental studies on a laboratory prototype
developed for the purpose.
II. VOLTAGE -S ENSORLESS OCC-BASED I NVERTERS
FOR PV S YSTEMS
A single-stage grid-connected PV system having a singlephase full-bridge voltage source inverter is shown in Fig. 1. The
inverter switches are controlled to generate an output voltage
from the inverter whose fundamental component is VI1 . By
controlling the magnitude and phase of VI1 through a proper
pulsewidth-modulation strategy, the power flow from the solar
array to the grid can be controlled while maintaining a high
power factor and low harmonic distortion. Considering the
phasor model of the system shown in Fig. 2 and assuming the
system to be lossless, the expression for real power flow from
the inverter to the grid can be expressed as follows:
P =

VI1 VS sin
L

(1)

where VS is the rms grid voltage, is the grid frequency,

and is the phase angle between the fundamental component
of the output voltage of the inverter and the grid voltage.
The inverter, however, cannot be controlled with the basic
OCC-based control technique as basic OCC-based schemes
exhibit instability in operation when the converter involved
is operated in an inverting mode of operation [22], [23]. In
order to overcome this problem, a modified OCC (M-OCC)based scheme has been reported in [22]. Although the scheme
presented in [22] does not require the service of a PLL, it
needs to sense instantaneous grid voltage similar to the case
of [4]. In the scheme reported in [22], the sensed grid voltage
is multiplied by a constant gain to generate a fictitious current
signal if in phase with the grid voltage. This fictitious current
signal is then added to the actual current drawn by the inverter.
The sum of these two signals is then used by the OCC core
controller to generate gating pulses for the inverter switches.

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Fig. 3. Control block diagram of the proposed voltage-sensorless scheme.

The scheme proposed in this paper does not sense the grid
voltage to generate the fictitious current signal required to
circumvent the issue of instability in OCC-based inverter. It
synthesizes the fictitious current signal required by multiplying
the fundamental component of the inverter output voltage with a
constant gain. Information regarding the inverter output voltage
is obtained from the switching function used to trigger the
inverter switches and not by sensing the inverter output voltage
per se. The schematic control block diagram of the proposed
scheme is shown in Fig. 3. The dc-link capacitor voltage is
sensed and compared with a set reference, and the error so generated is fed to a proportional and integral regulator to produce a
signal Vm . A sawtooth waveform of constant frequency having
a peak-to-peak value of 2Vm is generated using a resettable
integrator.
A free-running clock having a time period Ts is used to
reset the integrator, and hence, the frequency of the clock Ts1
decides the frequency of the sawtooth waveform as well as
the switching frequency of the devices. The time constant of
the integrator Ti is chosen to be half of Ts as explained in
[14]. A fictitious current signal proportional to the fundamental
component of the output voltage of the inverter (if = VI1 /Rp )
is added with the source current and properly scaled to obtain
the modulating signal x, where
x = is + if = is +

vI
.
Rp

(2)

In order to obtain VI1 and hence if , inverter switching pulses

are passed through a saturator. The output of the saturator
pulsates between the scaled dc-link voltage (Vdc ) and zero in
tandem with the pulsation of the switching sequence between
the states one and zero. The signal proportional to VI1 is
obtained by filtering the output of the saturator. The harmonic
spectrum of the saturator output has: 1) a fundamental frequency component (50 Hz); 2) a dc component; and 3) higher
frequency components centered around multiples of switching
frequency. Hence, a bandpass filter (BPF) is required to retrieve
the fundamental component of this signal and filter out the dc
and higher order components. A second-order BPF having a
central frequency equal to the power frequency (50 Hz) is used
for the purpose. The circuit diagram of the second-order filter
is shown in Fig. 4. The modulating signal is multiplied by a
gain Rs and is then compared with the sawtooth waveform to
generate the switching pulses. At every rising edge of the clock
pulse, S3 and S4 are turned on which leads to the increment

Fig. 4.

Circuit diagram of the analog implementation of BPF.

Fig. 5. Phasor diagram depicting the steady-state behavior of the proposed

voltage-sensorless system.

in source current is . When the modulating signal becomes

equal to the sawtooth waveform, S3 and S4 are turned off and
S1 and S2 are turned on so that the modulating signal and
hence is decrease. The rising and falling slopes of is are given
by (vs + Vdc )/L and (vs Vdc )/L, respectively, where vs is
utility voltage, Vdc is the dc-link capacitor voltage, and L is the
magnitude of the boost inductor.
The modulating signal x is being compared with the sawtooth waveform to generate the switching pulses. When x is
less than the sawtooth waveform, S3 and S4 are on, and the
output voltage of the inverter is Vdc . When x is greater than
the sawtooth waveform, S1 and S2 are turned on, and the output
voltage of the inverter is +Vdc . Hence, the average output
voltage of the inverter during a switching time period (time
period of the sawtooth waveform) is
vI =

Vm x
Vm + x
Vdc
(Vdc ) +
(Vdc ) =
x.
2Vm
2Vm
Vm

(3)

Therefore, it can be inferred from (3) that the average inverter

output voltage in a switching time period is proportional to
the modulating signal x. Further, the fundamental component
of the output voltage of the inverter will be in phase with the
modulating signal. By combining (2) and (3), the expression
for the inverter output voltage averaged over a switching time
period is obtained as follows:
vI =

RS Vdc
Vm


iS +

vI
Rp


.

(4)

From the aforementioned expression, it can be inferred that vI

and is are having a phase shift of either 0 or 180 between
each other. The phasor diagram showing the grid voltage, the
fundamental component of the inverter output voltage, and the
drop across the series filter inductance is depicted in Fig. 5 for
the inverting mode of operation. The equivalent circuit of the
proposed grid-connected PV system remains similar to that of

SREERAJ E. S. et al.: ONE-CYCLE-CONTROLLED VOLTAGE-SENSORLESS GRID-CONNECTED PV SYSTEM

Fig. 6.

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Equivalent circuit of the proposed grid-connected PV system.

the system reported in [22] and [23] and is shown in Fig. 6. The
OCC-based inverter along with the PV array is modeled by an
equivalent resistance r wherein
vI
r= .
is

(5)

Fig. 7. Signal-flow diagram of the proposed scheme.

where

 

F (s) =
s2 +

Combining (4) and (5), r is expressed as

RS RP Vdc
r=
.
Vm RP RS Vdc

(6)

It is to be noted that for the chosen direction of is , the sign

of r is negative. The power flow from the dc bus to the grid
is regulated by indirectly adjusting the value of the variable
resistance r by controlling Vm in a closed-loop fashion.
It has been mentioned earlier in this section that the gridconnected PV system cannot be controlled with the basic OCCbased technique wherein the grid voltage is not sensed, as
the basic OCC-based system exhibits instability in operation
when the converter is operated in the inverting mode [22]. The
proposed OCC-based scheme would revert back to the basic
OCC-based scheme if Rp is made infinite. In that case, the
fictitious current signal if becomes zero, and the equivalent
resistance r of the basic OCC-based inverter system becomes
Rs Vdc /Vm . Hence, the transfer function G(s) of the basic
OCC-based scheme can be expressed as
1
1
iS (s)
=
=
.
G(s) =
vS (s)
r + sL
sL + RS Vdc /Vm

(7)

It can be inferred from (7) that the closed-loop poles of the

system lie on the right half of the complex s plane if r is
negative. Furthermore, this is the case when the converter
is operating in the inverting mode. Hence, the operation of
the basic OCC-based scheme in the inverting mode leads to
instability in control.
The signal-flow diagram of the proposed OCC-based scheme
is shown in Fig. 7. The source current (iS ) shown in Fig. 7,
which is the same as that of the inductor current, is derived
from the voltage across the inductor (vS vI ) using the
voltagecurrent relationship of an inductor. The inverter output
voltage vI is derived from the sum of the source current iS and
the fictitious current if using (4). The gain of the block which
generates the fictitious current signal if is F (s)/RP , wherein
F (s) represents the transfer function of the second-order filter.
From the signal-flow diagram, the transfer function of the plant
proposed scheme is derived as
1

RS Vdc
iS (s)

 Vm 
= sL +
(8)
G(s) =
vS (s)
1 RS Vdc F (s)
RP Vm

s + 2

 

(9)

Applying RouthHurwitz stability criterion to the transfer function of (8), the condition for the stability of the proposed
scheme can be derived as


Vm
1
Q
.


(10)
Vm
Rp
Vdc RS
L 1 + LQ Vdc
RS
The parameter RP should be chosen such that it should
satisfy the stability criterion of (10) while supplying a rated
power to the grid. Once the stability criterion of the proposed
scheme is established, the system needs to be designed such
that it supplies the rated designed power while maintaining high
power factor. From the equivalent circuit shown in Fig. 6, the
amount of power flow P and power factor pf corresponding to
a given value of r can be expressed as follows:
VS 2 r
r2 + (L)2
r
pf =

.
2
r + (L)2
P =

(11)
(12)

From (11) and (12), it can be observed that the power delivered by the inverter decreases and the power factor increases
as r increases. The minimum-power-factor operation occurs
when the power delivered by the inverter is at its maximum.
Hence, the maximum power Pmax that can be delivered by the
inverter while operating at the minimum power factor (pf )min
is obtained by combining (11) and (12) as follows:

VS 2 (pf )min 1 ((pf )min )2
Pmax
.
(13)
L
It can be inferred from (13) that if the power being negotiated
by the system is less than Pmax , then the system would operate
at a power factor which is higher than (pf )min . For high-powerfactor operation, from (12), it can be inferred that L  r.
Here, represents the grid frequency, and r is the emulated
resistance of the inverter system as seen by the grid. Hence,
for all practical purposes, L can be neglected with respect to
r. Taking this into consideration, the power delivered by the
inverter can be expressed by combining (6) and (11) as follows:


1
Vm

.
(14)
P = VS 2
Rp
RS Vdc

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Fig. 8. Block diagram of the MPPT realization.

The gain of the feedback loop (1/Rp ) is to be chosen such that

the system delivers rated designed power while satisfying the
stability criterion of (10). Therefore, by combining (10) and
(14), the value of Rp which ascertains the stable operation of
the system while the system delivers the rated designed power
is derived as follows:


Pmax
1
VS 2
1

.
(15)
Rp
Pmax (L)2
LQ
VS 2
As Vs , Rs , and Rp are constants in (14), the change in the power
delivered by the inverter (P ) during a perturbation can be
expressed as


Vm
VS 2

.
(16)
P =
RS
Vdc
Hence, by observing the sign of the change in the value of
Vm /Vdc , it is possible to find whether the power delivered by
the inverter has increased or decreased during a perturbation,
and this information is used to realize the algorithm for the
MPPT of the system which is discussed in the following
section.
III. MPPT I MPLEMENTATION U SING P&O M ETHOD
P&O method is one of the popular methods to track the
maximum-power point [24]. Implementation of MPPT by P&O
method is generally done by using DSP or microcomputer, but
discrete analog and digital circuitry can also be used for the
purpose [25]. The analog controller proposed in this paper for
the implementation of the P&O algorithm is shown in Fig. 8.
The controller consists of an analog multiplier, a sampleand-hold circuit, a free-running clock, a toggle switch, and an
integrator. The P&O controller receives the signal Vm from the
OCC controller of Fig. 3. The output of the P&O controller is
Vdc which sets dc-link voltage reference required by the OCC
controller of Fig. 3. An integrator connected to the output of a
toggle flip-flop generates the voltage reference Vdc . The period
of the P&O cycle is decided by a free-running clock which sets
sampling instants for the sample-and-hold circuit and toggling
instants for the toggle flip-flop. In order to understand the
working of the MPPT controller, the typical variations of the
different signals of the MPPT controller block are shown in
Fig. 9. Depending on the output level of the toggle flip-flop,
Vdc can have either a rising or a falling slope. The rate of
change in Vdc is kept much smaller than the control bandwidth
of the OCC controller. An analog multiplier of low bandwidth

Fig. 9. Typical variations of the various signals of the MPPT block. (a) MPPT
clock. (b) Vm /Vdc and sample-and-hold output. (c) Output of toggle flip-flop.
(d) DC-link reference (Vdc ). Time scale: 0.5 s/div.

is used to perform the division Vm /Vdc . The signal Vm /Vdc

is sampled at the beginning of a period of a P&O cycle using
the sample-and-hold circuit. The typical variation of the power
estimating signal Vm /Vdc and the output of the sample-andhold circuit is shown in Fig. 9(b). A comparator compares the
current value of Vm /Vdc with that of its previous value stored
in the sample-and-hold circuit. A positive comparator output
implies that in the current cycle, the power delivered by the
inverter has decreased as per (16) while a negative comparator
output indicates an increment in power in the current P&O
cycle. Therefore, when the output of the comparator is positive,
the slope of Vdc is reversed to that followed in the previous
P&O cycle. Furthermore, if the comparator output is negative,
the slope of Vdc is maintained the same as that of the previous
cycle, as shown in Fig. 9(d). The output of the toggle flip-flop,
shown in Fig. 9(c), is integrated to generate the dc-link voltage
reference shown in Fig. 9(d). The reference dc-link voltage Vdc
so generated sets the operating voltage of the solar array.
IV. S IMULATION AND E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
A. Simulated Performance
In order to predict the performance of the proposed onecycle-controlled voltage-sensorless grid-connected system, detailed simulation studies are carried out on MATLABSimulink
platform. In order to objectively show that the proposed
voltage-sensorless scheme does not have the problem of current
instability while operating in the inverting mode of operation,
a model of the system shown in Fig. 1 is simulated. The
specifications for the solar array used in the simulation study,
corresponding to two different insolation levels (1000 and
500 W/m2 ), are provided in Table I. The insolation level considered for this simulation is 1000 W/m2 , and the dc-link reference
is externally set at 560 V. The grid considered is a 230-V-rms
50-Hz system. The parameters of the inverter chosen for the
purpose of simulation and the controller are as follows:
1) switching frequency: 20 kHz;
2) dc-link capacitor: 2200 F;
3) series inductor: 2 mH;
4) Rp : 1.5 ;

SREERAJ E. S. et al.: ONE-CYCLE-CONTROLLED VOLTAGE-SENSORLESS GRID-CONNECTED PV SYSTEM

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TABLE I
PV A RRAY S PECIFICATIONS

Fig. 11. Simulated performance of the system during step changes in insolation levels. (a) PV array current (IPV ; 2 A/div). (b) DC-link voltage (Vdc ;
200 V/div). (c) PV array power (PPV ; 1000 W/div). Time scale: 5 s/div.

Fig. 10. Simulated performance depicting the stable operation of the proposed
scheme. (a) Fictitious current (if ; 20 A/div). (b) Grid voltage (vS ; 200 V/div).
(c) Grid current (iS ; 10 A/div). (d) Control signal (Vm ; 5 V/div). (e) DC-link
voltage (Vdc ; 100 V/div). Time scale: 0.1 s/div.

5) RS : 0.16 ;
6) quality factor of BPF (Q): 2;
7) central frequency of BPF: 49.8 Hz.
A simulated performance of the OCC-based voltagesensorless scheme showing the effectiveness of the fictitious
current signal if in stabilizing the system is demonstrated in
Fig. 10. The fictitious current if is made equal to zero at 0.4 s
and restored back again at 0.5 s. During the period from 0.4
to 0.5 s, when if is equal to zero, the system operates as
a conventional OCC-based system trying to operate in the
inverting mode. It can be observed from Fig. 10 that the system
has become unstable during this period as dc-link voltage has
become uncontrollable and the signal Vm assumes a negative
value. At 0.5 s when if is restored back, operation of the
system has become stable, and the signal Vm assumes a positive
value. As the grid voltage and source current are almost 180

out of phase, the scheme is supplying power to the grid at a

very high power factor. From this simulated behavior, it can
be inferred that the dynamic response of the proposed OCCbased voltage-sensorless system is quite fast, and no instability
in current controllability is observed during the inverting mode
of operation.
A detailed simulation study of the proposed OCC-based
single-stage voltage-sensorless grid-connected PV system of
Fig. 1 has been carried out, and the simulated performance is
shown in Fig. 11. The specifications for the solar array given in
Table I are used in the simulation study. A sampling period of
0.4 s is used for the P&O algorithm used for realizing the MPPT
routine. The parameters for the single-phase grid-connected PV
system chosen for the purpose are given as follows:
1) dc-link capacitor: 8800 F;
2) series inductor: 3 mH;
3) grid voltage: 230-V rms;
4) grid frequency: 50 Hz.
The simulated performance of the system under varying
insolation conditions are shown in Fig. 11. The insolation
level is abruptly changed from 1000 to 500 W/m2 at 3 s and
reverted back to 1000 W/m2 at 8 s. Fig. 11(a) shows the current
supplied by the PV array, Fig. 11(b) shows PV array voltage,
and Fig. 11(c) depicts PV array power. When the insolation
level is 1000 W/m2 , it can be seen that the PV array voltage
and current settle around 560 V and 3.5 A. At 1000 W/m2 , these
values correspond to the voltage and current at the peak power
point as given in Table I. When the insolation level falls to
500 W/m2 , the PV array voltage and current fall and settle
around at 540 V and 1.8 A. These values correspond to the
voltage and current for the peak power point for the insolation
level of 500 W/m2 as per the PV array specifications depicted
in Table I. Hence, from the simulated performance, it can be
inferred that the system supplies the available maximum power
from the PV array to the grid. The transient performance of
the system can be seen during the change in insolation levels.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2013

TABLE II
PV A RRAY S PECIFICATIONS

Moreover, it can be observed from the simulated performance

that the changes in PV current and dc-link voltage are smooth
during the change in insolation level which implies a satisfactory transient performance for the system.
B. Experimental Studies
In order to confirm the viability of the proposed voltagesensorless grid-connected PV system, a scaled-down laboratory
prototype of the system is developed, and detailed experimental
studies are carried out. The schematic power-circuit diagram
of the system chosen for the simulation studies remains the
same for the experimental studies as well. The PV array is
considered to be a series combination of seven BP-340 multicrystalline silicon PV modules. The specifications for the
array, corresponding to two different insolation levels (1000
and 600 W/m2 ), are provided in Table II. The characteristics of
the PV array are emulated using Agilent E4360A Solar Array
Simulator. The parameters of the grid-connected PV system
chosen for the purpose are given as follows:
1) dc-link capacitor: 1100 F;
2) filter inductor: 3 mH;
3) grid voltage: 30-V rms;
4) grid frequency: 50 Hz;
5) Rp : 1.286 ;
6) RS : 0.118 ;
7) quality factor of BPF (Q): 2;
8) central frequency of BPF: 49.8 Hz.
The sampling period of the P&O algorithm utilized to realize
MPPT routine is 0.528 s. This value for the sampling period is
chosen so that the system attains a steady state in each cycle of
the P&O algorithm, as suggested in [26].
Under realistic field conditions, the insolation level may
change very drastically. In order to study the transient effects,
the PV system is subjected to a step change in insolation levels
from 1000 to 600 W/m2 at 4.6 s and vice versa at 14 s using the
solar array emulator. The variation of the current injected by
the system to the grid, PV array voltage, and PV array current
during this period is shown in Fig. 12. Trace-1 and Trace-2 of
Fig. 12 show grid current and PV array voltage, respectively,
whereas Trace-3 shows the PV array current. At both insolation
levels, the steady-state values of the dc-link voltage and PV
current settle near to the voltage and current corresponding to
the peak power point given in Table II. When the insolation
level is 1000 W/m2 , the PV array voltage and current settle
around 117 V and 1.7 A, respectively. When the insolation level
falls to 600 W/m2 , the PV array voltage and current fall and

Fig. 12. Measured performance of the proposed scheme during a step change
in insolation levels. (TR:1) Grid current (iS ; 19 A/div). (TR:2) DC-link voltage
Vdc (20 V/div). (TR:3) PV array output current (IPV ; 0.44 A/div). Time scale:
2 s/div.

Fig. 13. Measured performance of the proposed scheme during a step change
in insolation levels. (TR:1) PV array voltage Vdc (20 V/div). (TR:2) PV array
output current (IPV ; 0.44 A/div). (TR:3) Grid current (iS ; 7.6 A/div). Time
scale: 100 ms/div.

settle around at 111 V and 0.97 A. These values are almost near
to the voltage and current values at the peak power as given
in the PV array specifications given in Table II. The variation
of PV array voltage (Trace-1), PV array current (Trace-2), and
grid current (Trace-3) during a step change in the insolation
(6001000 W/m2 at t = 150 ms) in a smaller time window
is shown in Fig. 13. It can be inferred from Fig. 13 that the
transient behavior of the system is satisfactory.
The steady-state grid voltage, source current, dc-link voltage,
and the fictitious current signal obtained from the filtered output
of the switching pulses of the inverter are shown in Fig. 14.
It can be noted that the grid voltage and source current are
almost 180 out of phase thereby demonstrating the inverting
mode of operation. The measured harmonic spectrum of the
current supplied by the system to the grid and the grid voltage is
shown in Fig. 15 from which it can be inferred that all the loworder harmonics are less than 5.2% to that of the fundamental

SREERAJ E. S. et al.: ONE-CYCLE-CONTROLLED VOLTAGE-SENSORLESS GRID-CONNECTED PV SYSTEM

Fig. 14. Measured steady-state performance of the proposed scheme. (TR:1)

Grid voltage (vS ; 10 V/div). (TR:2) Grid current (iS ; 3.8 A/div). (TR:3) DClink voltage (Vdc ; 20 V/div). (TR:4) Fictitious current signal (if ; 2 A/div).
Time scale: 20 ms/div.

Fig. 15. Measured harmonic spectrum of the grid voltage and the current
injected by the system to the grid.

component. The measured THD of the current injected into

the grid is 6.05%. As an OCC-based scheme poses itself as
equivalent impedance to the grid, distortions present in the grid
voltage also appear in the current drawn by the system from the
grid. In the present case, the grid voltage has a THD of 4.0%
with considerable third harmonic distortion (3.3%) as shown in
the harmonic spectrum of Fig. 15.
The variation of the operating power factor with power level
is shown in Fig. 16. Curve-1 shows the ideal variation of
power factor estimated using (12). This occurs when the grid
frequency is equal to the central frequency (49.8 Hz) of the
BPF, as the fictitious current is in phase with the fundamental
component of the inverter output voltage. As the grid frequency
deviates from the central frequency of the BPF, the fictitious
current signal will lead or lag and causes change in operating
power factor. Curve-2 of Fig. 16 shows estimated variation in
power factor with power level when grid frequency drops to
49.5 Hz, and Curve-3 corresponds to 50.3 Hz. The measured
values of the power factor for the two different power levels,
corresponding to the two different insolation levels, are shown
as  in Fig. 16, and the values are 0.98 and 0.97 for 200 and
115 W, respectively.

1223

Fig. 16. Estimated and measured variations of power factor versus load in
watts. (Curve-1) When grid frequency (f ) is equal to central frequency of
BPF (49.8 Hz). (Curve-2) When f is 49.5 Hz. (Curve-3) When f is 50.3 Hz.
() Measured power factor versus load. y-axis: Power factor. x-axis: Power in
watts.

V. C ONCLUSION
An M-OCC-based single-stage voltage-sensorless gridconnected PV system has been proposed. The inherent limitation of the existing OCC-based inverters, such as the
requirement for sensing the grid voltage to tackle the instability
problem, is circumvented in the proposed scheme. The proposed scheme is based on a single stage of power conversion
and is realized by utilizing a considerably less number of
sensors compared to that of conventional schemes. Further,
the core controller of the proposed scheme can be realized by
means of a very simple analog controller. All the aforementioned features of the scheme make it an ideal candidate for
small and distributed single-phase grid-connected PV systems.
Detailed simulation studies have been carried out to verify the
effectiveness of the scheme. The viability of the scheme has
been confirmed by performing detailed experimental studies.
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Sreeraj E. S. was born in Kerala, India, in 1978. He

received the B.Tech. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the Regional Engineering
College, Calicut, India, in 2001 and the M.Tech. degree in energy systems engineering from the Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India, in
2006, where he is currently working toward the Ph.D.
degree in the Department of Electrical Engineering.
From August 2006 to January 2007, he was a
Research Associate with The Energy and Research
Institute, New Delhi, India. His current research
interests include renewable-energy-systems modeling and power electronics
converters.

Kishore Chatterjee (M10) was born in Calcutta,

India, in 1967. He received the B.E. degree from
the Maulana Azad College of Technology, Bhopal,
India, in 1990, the M.E. degree from Bengal Engineering College, Calcutta, in 1992, and the Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur,
Kanpur, India, in 1998.
From 1997 to 1998, he was a Senior Research
Associate with the Indian Institute of Technology
Kanpur, where he was involved with a project on
power-factor correction and active power filtering,
which was being sponsored by the Central Board of Irrigation and Power,
India. In 2004, he was a Visiting Fellow with Ecole de Technologie Superieure,
University of Quebec, Montreal, QC, Canada. Since 1998, he has been with the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay,
Mumbai, India, where he is currently a Professor. He is also with National
Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education, Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay. His current research interests are modern var compensators, active
power filters, utility-friendly converter topologies, and induction motor drives.

Santanu Bandyopadhyay was born in Calcutta,

India, in 1970. He received the B.Tech. degree in
energy engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India, in 1992 and
the M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees in energy systems
engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India, in 1995 and 1999,
respectively.
He then joined the Heat and Mass Transfer Division, Engineers India Ltd., New Delhi, India. Since
2001, he has been with the Department of Energy
Science and Engineering (formally, Energy Systems Engineering), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. His research interests include process integration,
pinch analysis, industrial energy conservation, modeling and simulation of
energy systems, design and optimization of renewable energy systems, etc.