Control algorithm for a PV powered BLDC drive for air conditioner application

There has been an increasing interest in the development of energy-efficient appliances using renewable energy sources. This paper deals with a Photovoltaic (PV) powered BLDC drive as a sustainable solution to air conditioning compressor drive. Compressor of an air conditioner (AC) accounts for 95% of its total power consumption. The bottle necks of operating a compressor drive on PV are: supplying high starting current, effect of intermittent nature of PV on drive performace, effective power management and stable operation in standalone mode. In this work, a control algorithm is proposed to operate a BLDC drive on PV and and a hybrid energy storage system (HESS). HESS is employed to smoothen the intermittent nature of PV and a HESS SOC control algorithm is formulated. The control algorithm limits the drive starting/transient current to 1.5 times the rated current. A virtual damping of DC link voltage is employed to make the system stable. The simulation results confirm the efficacy of control algorithm to obtain desired drive performance under various disturbances in PV and HESS.