Summary
Distributed generation (DG) is an important technology for increasing penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) and thereby reducing oil use and coal‐related emission. In addition, there has been recent renewed interest in multifunctional photovoltaic inverter due to its uniqueness to provide ancillary services while increasing device utilization factor. In this context, a combined active power‐sharing and grid current distortion enhancement‐based approach is proposed in this paper for three‐phase four‐wire (3P4W) grid‐connected solar photovoltaic (SPV) system. The DG is uniquely controlled by multifunctional photovoltaic inverter to autonomously acquire the following multifunctionalities: (a) active power‐sharing feature to govern the power flow between the SPV unit and utility grid based on the availability of active power at direct current (DC)–bus terminal; (b) shunt active power filter (SAPF) with functionalities of source current harmonic attenuation, load reactive current compensation, and zero sequences harmonic component mitigation, in addition to unity power factor (UPF) operation; and (c) to supply constant power to the electrical loads during solar intermittency. The proposed control systems of the DG mainly consist of the fundamental load current decomposition (FLCD) loop, active and reactive power components extractor, and source current balancing compensator. By adopting the proposed FLCD‐based approach, the fundamental load current is precisely detected while diminishing the computational intensiveness. In this study, an incremental conductance (INC)–based maximum power point (MPP) tracker has been realized using an Arm Cortex M4 microcontroller (STM32F407VGT). The multifunctionalities are demonstrated through exhaustive MATLAB/Simulink simulation results and are also validated by developing a laboratory prototype using dSPACE 1104 control platform.