Design and Control of Single-Phase-to-Three-Phase PFC for Cereals Grinding System Fed by PV-Battery Microgrid

Abstract

PV/Battery microgrids hold the most promising solution for providing electricity to remote areas. However, the power quality of these microgrids is vulnerable to nonlinear loads and power electronics components, often necessary to power certain systems such as the cereal grinding systems. These grinding systems consist of mills locally designed driven by induction motors. Given the constraints of microgrids and the structure of the cereal grinding system, a single-phase-to-three-phase Power Factor Corrector with two control strategies is proposed. The PFC control is used to control the power quality of the microgrid but also to regulate the DC-link voltage. The field oriented control strategy is used to improve the system efficiency. The performance of the power converter and control strategies are evaluated in simulation under Simulink environment. Results have verified the effectiveness of the proposed controls with a low current Total Harmonic Distortion, a near-unity power-factor and a significant efficiency improvement of cereals grinding system.