A Study on Grid Tied Bidirectional Converters for the Application of Power Conditioning /

Abstract

Pakistan faces a power shortfall of about 5000MW which could rise to 8000MW in the near future. New power generation sources are needed. The countries main source of power generation is thermal followed by hydal. Setting up hydal power plants require a lot of time while thermal power production run on fossil fuel which is slowly decaying. Alternate power generation sources are being focused like renewable energy. Photovoltaic energy is currently considered to be one of the most useful natural energy sources because it is free, abundant, pollution-free, and distributed throughout the Earth. PV power sources nowadays are largely being used from small applications like solar charged lights to large application like powering space station. Power Conditioning systems (PCS) are a more recent area of research in PV systems. A power conditioning system is a device intended to improve the quality of the power that is delivered to electrical load equipment. It acts in one or more ways to deliver a voltage of the proper level and characteristics to enable load equipment to function properly. The PCS have MPPT, DC-DC Converter, inverter and a rectifier. In this research the converters in the PCS are designed and simulated using wide bandgap semi-conductor (GaN) transistors and their results are compared with traditional Si transistor converters. GaN transistors add the advantage that it can operate at high frequency with low switching, resistive and conductive losses as compared to Si transistors.