A 3 kV, 18 kW medium-voltage PV plant demonstrator

A. Bier (1, 2) , O. Wiss (1, 2) , P. Messaoudi (1, 2)

1 DRT (CEA) - Direction de Recherche Technologique (CEA)
2 NUCLEART - ARC-Nucleart CEA Grenoble

Today, photovoltaic (PV) plants operate at low DC voltage (maximum 1.5 kV) and inject power in the low-voltage, single-phase or three-phase public grid via an inverter. In PV plant from some hundreds of kilowatt, power is injected in the medium-voltage three-phase public grid using transformer between the inverter and the grid. PV plants of hundreds of megawatts are today in operations and siliconcarbide (SiC) power semiconductors with high breaking voltage capabilities are available on the market or under samples, allowing to design static converter with higher efficiency than IGBT based ones. This leads to consider the development of DC-side medium-voltage PV plant for high power applications. An 18 kW, 3 kV PV string is built to demonstrate the feasibility of such a medium-voltage PV plant.

Keywords: PV Module; PV Plant; Medium-Voltage; Static Converter; Inverter; Power Semiconductor; Silicon Carbide; Contactor; Disconnector; Buck Chopper ___________________________________________________________________________

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]

A. Bier, O. Wiss, P. Messaoudi. A 3 kV, 18 kW medium-voltage PV plant demonstrator. COSYS DC 2017 - International Conference on Components and Systems for DC Grids, Mar 2017, Grenoble, France. ⟨cea-03780308⟩