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Abstract—Intelligent photovoltaic (PV) module monitor- The ability to predict failures by monitoring changes in system
ing can automatically locate the position of panels and parameters not only is significant for operation and maintenance
monitor the status of PV modules, which is of great signif- of PV plants, but also can offer plant owners the possibility to
icance for PV plants operation and maintenance. As a new
communication method in the field of PV monitoring, the increase profitability by decreasing downtime.
monitoring of PV modules based on power line communica- Existing systems typically exploit distributed sensors that
tion is the future trend of PV power plants monitoring due to communicate with a remote station through a wireless proto-
its low maintenance cost and strong anti-interference abil- col [8], [9], but only a few make use of dedicated cables [7].
ity. This paper presents an intelligent PV module monitoring
Although its cost is low, the wireless communication, which uses
scheme based on the parallel resonant coupling unit, which
uses the dc bus as the communication channel and modula- the common frequency, is particularly vulnerable to the inter-
tes the monitoring data into a high-frequency form to carry ference of the same frequency band, which leads to an incorrect
out the carrier communication. By using the parallel transmission of the instruction and a damage to the security
resonant coupling, the high-frequency carrier wave is operation of the power network. According to the National De-
injected into the dc bus, which improves the system velopment and Reform Commission’s “Power Monitoring Sys-
efficiency and anti-interference ability. In addition, an
adaptive level decision circuit is proposed to improve the tem Security Provisions,” PV plants monitoring system shall
flexibility and scalability of the communication system by be a production control area, within which the use of wireless
adaptively changing the reference level of the decision communication equipment is strictly prohibited. Wired com-
circuit. Experimental results achieved by a developed munication requires additional communication cables, which
power line transceiver demonstrate both feasibility and increases the cost of system operation and maintenance.
validity of the proposed scheme.
Power line communication (PLC) technology, as a new type
Index Terms—Intelligent photovoltaic (PV) system, mod- of communication in the field of PV monitoring, enables com-
ule monitoring, parallel resonant coupling unit, power line munication over existing dc power lines and requires no ad-
communication (PLC), PV plants maintenance.
ditional communication lines. Using PLC technology in PV
I. INTRODUCTION power plants monitoring is bound to be the trend of future
development.
HE market for sustainable, renewable energies is growing
T fast and, in recent years, great progress in terms of the
overall efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) systems has been made
Numerous PV monitoring systems based on PLC have been
studied [10]–[22]. A current pulse PLC scheme is proposed in
[10], which can transmit data signal of the PV module by the
[1], [2]. However, a recent study by the International Energy
instantaneous current drop pulse generated by shunt circuit of
Agency (IEA) finds that faults and defects reduce PV plants
the module. However, this scheme can only be one-way commu-
efficiency [3]–[6]. In order to improve the performance ratio
nication. In [11], an inductive coupling PLC scheme to realize
of PV plants, the IEA recommends that monitoring be taken
the transmission of the carrier communication signal through
directly at the PV module. Module monitoring is capable of
the current transformer is proposed. However, the signal at-
finding a fault or failure in the PV system as soon as possible.
tenuation of this scheme is large and the signal transmission
efficiency is low [12]–[14]. A capacitive coupling PLC scheme
Manuscript received January 22, 2017; revised April 27, 2017 and is proposed in [15], which utilizes the coupling transformer to
June 18, 2017; accepted June 30, 2017. Date of publication August
7, 2017; date of current version December 15, 2017. (Corresponding transmit the carrier communication signal. However, due to the
author: Fusheng Wang.) parallel connection between the transformer and the PV mod-
W. Mao, X. Zhang, F. Wang, and T. Zhao are with Hefei Univer- ule, the power requirement of the signal transmitter is high and
sity of Technology, Hefei 230009, China (e-mail: hfut_maow@163.com;
honglf@ustc.edu.cn; 10748451@qq.com; 864125074@qq.com). the emission efficiency is low [16]. In [17]–[22], different PLC-
R. Cao and L. Xu are with Sungrow Power Supply Co., Ltd., Hefei based PV module monitoring schemes are proposed, but all
230088, China (e-mail: crx@sungrow.cn; xulc@sungrowpower.com). proposed schemes are based on integrated PLC communication
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. modem which is expensive and heightens the cost of the PV
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2017.2736483 module monitoring.
0278-0046 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
2654 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 65, NO. 3, MARCH 2018
Fig. 7. (a) Equivalent circuit of coupling circuit of the proposed PLC Fig. 8. Comparison of impedance frequency response of the coupling
scheme. (b) Simplified equivalent circuit of coupling circuit. circuit under different parameters of the coupling transformer: (a) under
different parameters of the magnetizing inductor, (b) under different pa-
rameters of the leakage inductor, and (c) under different parameters of
the mutual capacitor between the two winding.
the larger the magnetizing inductor, the greater the impedance D. Signal Demodulation Circuit
of the coupling circuit at resonant frequency. It can be known
The signal demodulation circuit is used to extract the original
from Fig. 8(b) and (c) that the leakage inductor and interwind-
information-bearing signal from the modulated carrier wave. As
ing capacitor have no effect on the impedance of the coupling
shown in Fig. 10, the demodulation circuit is mainly composed
circuit at the resonant frequency. In general, the parameters of
of bandpass filter (BPF), signal amplifier, envelope detector,
the coupling transformer have little effect on the impedance of
and decision circuit. The modulated carrier signal received by
the coupling circuit at resonant frequency.
the coupling transformer may contain switching noises and har-
Fig. 9 shows the comparison of the coupling circuit under
monics of the PV inverter, which are filtered by BPF. Therefore,
different parameters of the resonant components. In Fig. 9(a),
a passive LC BPF, which can be implemented at lower cost com-
with the increase of the parasitic resistor of resonant inductor,
pared with active BPF, is designed in this paper. Fig. 11(a) shows
the impedance of the coupling circuit at resonant frequency is
the developed filter, and the corresponding frequency response
decreased rapidly. Fig. 9(b) shows that the increase of the par-
is shown in Fig. 11(c). As shown in Fig. 11(c), the designed
asitic capacitor of resonant inductor leads to the impedance of
filter, whose lower cutoff −3 dB point is set by 169 kHz and
the coupling circuit at resonant frequency increase. Fig. 9(c)
upper cutoff −3 dB point is set by 220 kHz, can remove out-of-
shows different impedance frequency responses of the coupling
band noises. However, in practical situations, the effect of the
circuit under ideal capacitor, 5% tolerance capacitor and 10%
parasitic parameters of the magnetic components on the BPF
tolerance capacitor, respectively, when the resonant inductor is
should be taken into account. Fig. 11(b) shows the equivalent
constant. As shown in Fig. 9(c), compared with ideal impedance
circuit of the designed BPF when considering parasitic param-
at resonant frequency, the impedance of the coupling circuit
eters. As is shown in Fig. 11(c), the frequency response of the
under 5% tolerance capacitor is decreased by 22%, while the
BPF is almost the same before 500 kHz under both two cases.
impedance of the coupling circuit under 10% tolerance capac-
Thus, in practice, the performance of the BPF can still meet
itor is reduced by as much as 72%. Fig. 9(d) shows different
the requirements. After filtered by BPF, the signal is amplified
impedance frequency responses of the coupling circuit under
and fed into the envelope detector that is composed of a diode,
ideal inductor, 5% tolerance inductor, and 10% tolerance in-
a capacitor, and a resistor. The decision circuit judges whether
ductor, respectively, when the resonant capacitor is constant.
the received signal is logic “1” or “0.” The decided logic data is
As Fig. 9(d) shows, compared with ideal impedance at reso-
input to the MCU.
nant frequency, the impedance of the coupling circuit under
However, the amplitude of the received signal varies with the
5% tolerance inductor drops by 70%, while the impedance of
number of modules in the PV system. The change of the ampli-
the coupling circuit under 10% tolerance inductor is reduced
tude of the received signal can lead to variations in the amplitude
by up to 83%. Generally, the effect of the parasitic parameters
of the detected signal. Such variations may cause output errors
of resonant inductor and the resonant components’ tolerances
in decision circuit because of the fixed judgment level. In order
on the impedance of coupling circuit at resonant frequency is
to minimize the digital signal quantization errors, the automatic
large.
gain control amplifier circuit is typically adopted [24], [25],
In order to increase the impedance of the coupling circuit at
which adjusts the amplifier gain properly based on the ampli-
resonant frequency for improving the signal transmission ef-
tude of the received signal detected by peak detector circuit to
ficiency as much as possible, the selected parasitic resistor of
keep the amplitude of the amplified signal unchanged. How-
resonant inductor and the selected tolerance of resonant compo-
ever, the implementation of this method is complex and costly.
nents should be as small as possible. Therefore, considering the
Therefore, a novel adaptive level decision circuit is proposed
signal transmitting efficiency and the system cost, the selected
in this paper. As shown in Fig. 12(a), the proposed adaptive
parasitic resistor of resonant inductor is about 0.4 Ω and the
level decision circuit is composed of LPF and resistance voltage
resonant elements are selected as 5% tolerance capacitor and
division circuit. As Fig. 12(b) shows, the adaptive level deci-
10% tolerance inductor.
sion circuit, which functions as an average detector that extracts
Zcoupler (s) = Z1 (s) + (Z24 (s)// ((Z5 (s)//Z23 (s)) + (Z6 (s)//Z34 (s))))
Z5 (s)Z23 (s) Z6 (s)Z34 (s)
= Z1 (s) + Z24 (s)// +
Z5 (s) + Z23 (s) Z6 (s) + Z34 (s)
Z5 (s)Z23 (s) (Z6 (s) + Z34 (s)) + Z6 (s)Z34 (s) (Z5 (s) + Z23 (s))
= Z1 (s) + Z24 (s)//
(Z5 (s) + Z23 (s)) (Z6 (s) + Z34 (s))
= Z1 (s)
Z24 (s) (Z5 (s)Z23 (s) (Z6 (s) + Z34 (s)) + Z6 (s)Z34 (s) (Z5 (s) + Z23 (s)))
+ .
Z24 (s) ((Z5 (s) + Z23 (s)) (Z6 (s) + Z34 (s))) + Z5 (s)Z23 (s) (Z6 (s) + Z34 (s)) + Z6 (s)Z34 (s) (Z5 (s) + Z23 (s))
(5)
2658 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 65, NO. 3, MARCH 2018
Fig. 11. (a) Designed BPF under ideal conditions. (b) Designed BPF
when considering parasitic parameters. (c) Frequency response of BPF
under both two cases.
Fig. 12. (a) Proposed adaptive level decision circuit. (b) Theoretical
Fig. 10. Structure of signal demodulation circuit. waveform with the proposed circuit.
et al.: RESEARCH ON POWER LINE COMMUNICATION BASED ON PARALLEL RESONANT COUPLING TECHNOLOGY IN PV MODULE MONITORING 2659
IV. CONCLUSION
Intelligent PV module monitoring can automatically locate
the position of panels and monitor the status of PV modules,
which is of great significance for PV plants operation and main-
tenance. In this paper aiming at the problems of existing PV
module monitoring system based on PLC technology, an intel-
ligent PV module monitoring system based on the parallel res-
onant coupling unit was proposed. A set of experimental tests
have been conducted on the proposed PV module monitoring
system, which is installed in a real PV system composed of 16
255 W PV modules and one PV inverter. By comparing the per-
formance of the proposed coupling circuit with the capacitive
coupling circuit of [15], the superiority of the proposed tech-
Fig. 19. Relationship between BER and the number of PV modules.
nique in improving the system efficiency and anti-interference
ability was confirmed. In addition, experimental results also
adaptive level decision circuit. As the number of PV modules demonstrate that the flexibility and reliability of the commu-
increases, the amplitude of the received communication signal nication system can be effectively improved by adopting the
becomes smaller. When the amplitude of the received signal proposed adaptive level decision circuit.
becomes smaller, the fixed decision level almost reaches the
peak of the signal envelope. The result is that errors occur in the
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pp. 274–279. Tao Zhao (S’17) was born in Henan, China, in
1991. He received the B.S. degree in electrical
engineering and automation from Xi’an Techno-
Wang Mao (S’17) was born in Anhui, China, logical University, Xi’an, China and the M.S. de-
in 1992. He received the B.S. degree in elec- gree in power electronics and power drives from
trical engineering from the School of Electrical Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China, in
Engineering and Automation, Anhui University, 2014 and 2017, respectively. He is currently
Hefei, China, in 2013. He is currently working working toward the Ph.D. degree in electrical en-
toward the Ph.D. degree in electric engineering gineering at Hefei University of Technology.
and automation at Hefei University of Technol- His current research interests include the
ogy, Hefei. modeling and control of power converters, and
His current research interests include power multilevel converters.
line communication technologies, the modeling
and control of power converters, and photo-
voltaic generation technologies.