Rapid prototyping of power electronics converters for photovoltaic system application using Xilinx System Generator

The aim of this study is to develop a research platform for rapid prototyping of the power electronics converters for solar photovoltaic (PV) system applications. This study describes the field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation of voltage source inverter (VSI) used for PV system power conversion. The PV system and inverter models are realised in simulation as part of the HIL to test the real-time functionality of the FPGA controller. The generation of switching control signals for the VSI and its interface with the PV system is developed through the Xilinx System Generator (XSG) domain. The XSG automatically generates the VHSIC hardware description language (VHDL) code using hardware description language co-simulation for generation of gating signal for modulation of the VSI. To validate the proposed approach, the sinusoidal pulse-width modulation using bipolar and unipolar switching schemes and current control method have been tested for the PV supported VSI. The proposed approach of the rapid prototype model has been designed and implemented in the laboratory through XSG and MATLAB/SIMULINK interface. Performance comparison between the software simulation and real-time HIL simulation has been demonstrated.