Supercapacitor-Assisted Voltage Regulation in Solar Power Systems under Transient Conditions

Abstract

Voltage instability is a severe issue in solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and occurs especially during transient conditions like rapid changes of irradiance and sudden changes in the load. Such disturbances cause serious voltage variations, poor quality of power and damaged reliability of the systems. To solve this problem, a solar PV system is proposed to use in this paper with a supercapacitor-assisted scheme of voltage regulation. The suggested method will use Incremental Conductance (INC) algorithm to track the maximum power point while also using the more sophisticated Model Predictive Control (MPC) based strategy that regulates the DC bus voltage. The interfaced supercapacitor is used to provide rapid dynamic response to balance momentary power imbalances via the bidirectional DC to DC converter. The system is simulated and tested with MATLAB/Simulink with changes in irradiance instantaneously and load instantaneously under diverse transient conditions like irradiance and load variations. Simulation findings indicate that the proposed means can be used to achieve high levels of voltage stability as opposed to traditional PI-controlled systems. In particular, settling time is decreased by about 3545 percent, and voltage deviation and overshoot values are minimised by some 3040 percent. We also have the addition of the supercapacitor to enhance smoothing of power as well as lowering the stress on the main power source. Generally, the proposed control strategy requires rapid transient response, better voltage regulation as well as increased system reliability. The obtained results indicate the success of supercapacitor energy storage and predictive control method in synergy in the next-generation renewable energy systems, which is an attractive solution to stable and effective solar energy integration.