Sliding mode control of an active power filter with photovoltaic maximum power tracking

Abstract Nowadays, the increase in solar energy installations as a source of energy is growing considerably. The connection to the grid of these installations generally injects all the power obtained from the panel as active power, making zero the reactive power. The same power injection system can be used to achieve a unit power factor if the active filter feature is integrated in it. In this paper, an active power filter (APF) that can control both, the MPP (maximum power point) of a photovoltaic system (PV) and the power factor of a nonlinear load connected to the grid using a three phase DC/AC power inverter with new sliding mode controllers is presented. Perturbation–observation (P&O) is the used MPPT algorithm and three Sliding Mode Controllers (SMC) are used to regulate the DC voltage of the PV and the current d and q components of the active filter using the PQ theory. With a SMC, no exact knowledge of the model parameters is required and it offers good behavior against unmodeled dynamics, insensitivity to parameter variations and good rejection of external disturbances. The space vector pulse wide modulation (SVPWM) of 7 and 5 segments is implemented in order to check the efficiency and grid current ripple. Several experimental tests have been carried in different conditions, concluding that the presented system provides an efficient maximum power tracking and a good power filter characteristic.