Evaluation of Dead-Time Effect of Grid-Connected Inverters Using Broadband Methods

Abstract

Power electronic inverters are devices that are used to interface renewables, such as photovoltaic panels or wind turbines, with the electrical power system. The inverter should control its output current to follow a sinusoidal reference to avoid distorting the voltage waveform of the power system. However, in real inverters dead-time is used in the control signals which causes unwanted harmonics, leading to lower power quality. The amount of harmonics is difficult to predict due to nonlinear nature of the dead-time. Moreover, the harmonic distortion depends on many variables, such as inverter control parameters and power system impedance. This paper shows that frequency response from inverter control signal (duty ratio) to grid current is linked to the detrimental dead-time effect and poor power quality. The frequency response is identified by perturbing the inverter control signal with a maximum length binary sequence (MLBS). The magnitude of the identified frequency response is shown to follow the same trend as the amount of current distortion. Therefore, the effect of dead-time on power quality could potentially be modeled using a linearized model allowing optimal control design in the presence of dead time.