Reliability Evaluation of PV Inverter Considering Impact of Reactive Power Injection

Abstract

Due lack of fossil fuels and other environmental concerns have led to increase the utilization of renewable energy resources to minimise the conventional power generation. In the past decade, notable amount of energy has been harnessed from the renewable energy resources like solar, wind etc. Globally, PV system installation exhibits the increasing trend and shares about 3.7 % of the total energy demand. Nevertheless, it is also used for reactive power support especially during the night-time where there is no solar irradiance. However, reliability performance of PV inverter is of major concern. Injection of reactive power increases the thermal stress on the power electronics switches in PV inverter and affects the reliability performance. Hence, this paper analyses reliability performance of PV Inverter with and with reactive power injection. It is regarded a test case of a 5 kW grid-connected PV system with real time mission profile data (Solar Irradiance and Ambient Temperature) in an Indian site. The results show that the reactive power injection by PV inverter significantly affects the reliability performance.