Energy Efficient Photovoltaic-Electric Spring for Real and Reactive Power Control in Demand-Side Management

Photovoltaic-electric spring (PV-ES) is a promising topology to utilize widespread residential roof-top photovoltaic systems in demand-side management. Power control for an integrated configuration of photovoltaic-electric spring system to achieve dynamic supply-demand balance in power distribution networks is presented. Extraction of maximum power from PV panel using Perturb and Observe algorithm along with boost converter are designed. This power is given as input to the DC link of the Electric Spring. The modeling and design of the integrated system are detailed. Extensive simulations are carried out in MATLAB/Simulink to observe the performance of the PV-ES system. The effectiveness of the proposed topology was verified for changes in line voltage, PV irradiation, and reference power. It was confirmed that the proposed PV-ES precisely controls the active power consumption of the critical load, rigidly regulates the voltage at the point of common coupling (PCC), and follows the variations in reference power available for the smart load. Finally, the expansive performance of ES fed with a PV source was confirmed to be superior over an ES system fed with a DC source.