TABLE OF CONTENTS The Kyoto agreement on global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has prompted renewed interest in renewable energy systems worldwide. Many renewable energy technologies today are well developed, reliable, and cost competitive with the conventional fuel generators. The cost of renewable energy technologies is on a falling trend and is expected to fall further as demand and production increases. There are many renewable energy sources (RES) such as biomass, solar, wind, mini hydro and tidal power. However, solar and wind energy systems make use of advanced power electronics technologies and, therefore the focus in this chapter will be on solar photovoltaic and wind power.
One of the advantages offered by (RES) is their potential to provide sustainable electricity in areas not served by the conventional power grid. The growing market for renewable energy technologies has resulted in a rapid growth in the need of power electronics. Most of the renewable energy technologies produce DC power and hence power electronics and control equipment are required to convert the DC into AC power.
Inverters are used to convert DC to AC. There are two types of inverters: (a) stand-alone or (b) grid-connected. Both types have several similarities but are different in terms of control functions. A stand-alone...
