An Improved Harmonic Compensation Method for a Single-Phase Grid Connected Inverter

Grid-connected inverters should satisfy a certain level of total harmonic distortion (THD) to meet harmonics standards, such as IEEE 519 and P1547. The output quality of an inverter is typically degraded due to grid voltage harmonics, dead time effects, and the device’s turn-on/turn-off delay, which all contribute to increasing the THD value of the output. The use of a harmonic controller is essential to meet the required THD value for inverter output under a distorted grid condition. In this study, an improved feedforward harmonic compensation method is proposed to effectively eliminate low-order harmonics in the inverter current to the grid. In the proposed method, harmonic components are directly compensated through feedforward terms generated by the proportional resonant controller with the grid current in a stationary frame. The proposed method is simple to implement but powerful in eliminating harmonics from the output. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through simulation using PSIM software and experiments with a 5 kW single-phase grid-connected inverter.