On the design and operation of a standalone residential PV system in Egypt

This paper is aimed at securing the electric demand of household appliances up to 2 kW at 230 V during day and night hours using photovoltaic (PV) system. This is achieved by integration PV array, inverter, and LC filter with storage batteries and their charge controller. The system design is based on assessing the total electric power demand and the load profile during day and night hours. During day hours, the output from PV array charges the batteries and feed the load. During the night hours, the batteries feed the load. The system has been implemented and the output voltage waveforms have been recorded for different load demand values. A complete harmonic analysis has been done with and without using the filter at day and night hours. The results show that the designed system succeeded in feeding the household appliances during day and night hours. Without using LC filter, the inverter output voltage waveforms are close to be square in waveform with total harmonic distortion (THD) values of 38.85% and 41.2% during day and night hours respectively, which exceeds the IEEE standard limits. By using LC filter, The inverter output voltage waveforms are close to be sinusoidal in waveform with THD values of 6.85% and 7.2% during day and night hours respectively, which match the IEEE standards limits for harmonic distortions in the low voltage class (voltage less than 2.3 kV).