Development of a grid-connected electricity supply system using solar energy

Abstract

Producing energy can have many undesirable effects. Carbon emissions, nuclear waste, and other pollutants can cause much harm to the environment and cause health problems. And many energy sources are in finite supply. Not only does that drive prices up, but it also leads to political conflicts when people decide they are not willing to share. Above all the energy sources in use today, solar show the most long-term promise for solving the world’s energy problems. On any given day, 35,000 times the total amount of energy that humans use falls onto the face of the Earth from the sun. If people could just tap into a tiny fraction of what the sun is providing each day, our lives will be totally changed.

Singapore, being in the equatorial region, is an ideal area to capture solar energy as sunlight is available throughout the year. As such, the Singapore government has already made their official intentions clear that and identify the photovoltaic industry as an emerging industry.

The report provides the details for the development of a grid-connected electricity supply system. This report consists of 2 parts.

The first part is the design and development of the inverter system. The inverter system consists of a basic DC-DC boost converter topology to boost the DC voltage from the charge controller to a higher voltage level for the DC-AC inverter and a single-phase full bridge inverter to convert the DC voltage to an AC voltage of 230Vac at 50Hz. Simulations were carried out using PSIM software for verification before hardware circuits were developed for actual implementation.

The second part focuses on the studying of the photovoltaic (PV) module to find its I-V and P-V characteristics and maximum power point under various solar radiations.

Finally, there would be a conclusion to give an overall summary of the project and recommendations for enhancement to improve the systems designed.