ADRC Control for a Single-Stage Photovoltaic
System Connected to the Three-Phase Electrical Grid
Ali Boukhriss
Laboratory of Applied Sciences for the Environment and Sustainable Development
Higher School of Technology, Cadi Ayyad University
Essaouira, Morocco
a.boukhriss@cuca.ma
Abstract— This work aims to study the active disturbance
rejection control ADRC associated with incremental conductance
IC (ADRC-IC), applied to the single-stage grid-connected PV
system under atmospheric variation conditions, to control the
maximum power point MPP. The control technique is compared
with the conventional perturb and observe P&O control. ADRC is
also used to control the inverter, connected to the grid through an
RL filter, to keep the DC bus voltage constant concerning the
reference provided by the MPP control unit and also to ensure a
unit power factor at the power injected in the network.
Keywords—Active disturbance rejection control ADRC; MPP;
photovoltaic system; incremental conductance; perturb and observe;
I. INTRODUCTION
Renewable energies are now one of the most promising ways
to reduce greenhouse gases and contribute to the protection of
the planet. Most countries have adopted policies to diversify
their energy mix by increasing the contribution of renewable
energy. The two main areas that have experienced rapid
development over the past decade are wind power and solar
photovoltaic energy.
In this paper, we focus on photovoltaic systems. The main
objective of this type of configuration is to ensure, on the one
hand, the extraction of the maximum power from the
photovoltaic field and, on the other hand, the injection of the
extracted power into the grid with a unitary power factor and
reduced harmonics.
The common conventional technique used for MPPT is the
P&O algorithm due to its simplicity of implementation.
However, it has some limitations in terms of tracking MPP
during rapid changes in weather conditions, resulting in
oscillations around the maximum power point [1-2]. The
conductance increment technique is also widely used. It
overcomes some drawbacks of P&O control concerning MPP
tracking efficiency, rise time, and dynamic response [3-4].
Other so-called non-conventional or soft computing
techniques, based on artificial intelligence, are increasingly
applied. These include fuzzy logic control FLC, artificial neural
network ANN, genetic algorithm GA and their variants... etc.
These new techniques overcome the disadvantages of
conventional methods; however, they have some drawbacks
mainly related to the cost and complexity of implementation [5-
6].
In this work, ADRC control, classified as a nonlinear
method, is applied to the entire system. This control technique
allows to reject in real-time the perturbations, both internal and
external ones and does not require any detailed knowledge of the
mathematical model of the system. Indeed, the photovoltaic
system, which is a highly non-linear system, is subject to strong
disturbances mainly related to climatic conditions (irradiation,
temperature) [7].
ADRC will be applied to the control of the inverter to control
the voltage at its input at the reference value, provided by the
MPPT block, and also to ensure a unit power factor to the power
injected in the network. On the other hand, a combination of the
active disturbance rejection control and the incremental
conductance ADRC-IC will be applied to the MPPT control
block, to ensure the operation of the PV at its maximum power
point [8].
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The design of
the system structure is described in Section 2. Section 3 provides
an overview of the mathematical model of the system. Section 4
briefly describes the principle of the ADRC control technique.
In Section 5, ADRC-IC and P&O techniques are applied to the
MPPT control block, while the ADRC is applied to the inverter
control. The simulation results are presented in Section 6 and a
conclusion in Section 7.
II. SYSTEM STRUCTURE
The model under study is a single-stage PV system
connected to the network. The MPPT control block provides the
DC bus voltage reference corresponding to the maximum power
point.
The network is connected to the inverter through a filter and
DY transformer with secondary winding (high voltage)
connected to the grid. A filter, composed of an Rg resistance in
series with Lg inductance, is used to reduce the harmonics
produced by the use of semi-conductors of power electronics
(IGBTs-Diodes).
The photovoltaic field generates 300 kW under standard test
conditions (1000 w/m2 and 25°C). A 300 kW load, inserted
between buses 1 and 2, consumes the power produced by the
photovoltaic system. When the PV power is insufficient
according to the climatic conditions, the load takes the energy
deficit from the network. The schematic of the studied model is
shown in Fig. 1.
 C. Filter and transformer design
The RL filter is connected to the DY transformer. The
positive sequence of the equivalent DY transformer model is
described in Fig. 4. Where VL and VH denote low and high
voltage respectively. z1 and z2 are the per-unit leakage complex
impedance of primary and secondary winding referred to the
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram. primary winding. G and Bm represent respectively lose
resistance and magnetizing inductance. The DY transformer
III. SYSTEM MODELING
includes a 30° phase shift angle in the high winding voltage.
A. PV modeling
The photovoltaic panel is modeled by the association of NPP
strings in parallel. Each string is formed by NSS modules in
series. One module consists of NS cells in series. The one diode
model is widely used in the literature (Fig. 2). This model
consists of a photonic current source Iph, a junction diode D, and
a resistor RP connected in parallel. The whole is connected in Fig. 4. Per-unit transformer model in positive sequence
series with a resistor RS.
The photovoltaic module delivers IPV current and VPV Kirchhoff law applied to the circuit in Fig. 4, (we assume
voltage at its output. The output current is expressed as follows: that G and Bm are neglected), allows writing the voltage
equations in per-unit, (time is kept in seconds) and in dq-axis
  V + R s IPV   VPV + R s I PV representation (Park transformation) as:
I PV = I ph − I0 exp  PV  − 1 − (1)
  NS VT α   RP
 dIgd
1
 Vcd = Vgd + R tot Igd + L tot − L tot Igq
Isc + K I Δ T  ωb dt
I0 = (2)  (4)
 Voc + K V Δ T  V = V + R I + 1 L dIgq
exp   −1  cq gq tot gq tot + L tot Igd
 NS αVT   ωb dt
G Where:
Iph = ( Isc + K I Δ T ) (3)
Gn • VC and Vg (in dq-axis) are converter and grid voltage
Where VOC is the open-circuit voltage, ISC is the short-circuit respectively and ωb is the base angular speed.
current, KV is the open-circuit voltage/temperature coefficient,
KI is the short circuit current/temperature coefficient, and VT
• (
R tot = R g + R T ; Ltot = Lg + LT )
thermal voltage, and a is the ideality factor. • ( R T , L T ) represent the total resistances and inductances
in per-unit, of the transformer windings referred to as the
low voltage
D. DC bus voltage model
The power flow equation through the DC bus voltage is
given as follows:

Fig. 2. Model of PV module dVDC 3

C DC VDC = PPV − Vgd Igd (5)
dt 2
B. DC AC converter model: Equation (5) in-per unit becomes:
The inverter model is shown in Fig. 3. Each arm consists of
dVDC 3
two complementary switches modeled by an associated IGBT-
Diode transistor.
C DC VDC
dt 2
(
= ωb PPV − Vgd Igd ) (6)
Or in the linear form:
dw 3
=
dt C DC
(
ωb PPV − Vgd Igd ) (7)

Where, w = VDC2 .
We assume that power losses in the inverter, filter, and
transformer are neglected.
Fig. 3. Inverter model
 IV. ACTIVE DISTURBANCE REJECTION CONTROL y& = (f − z2 ) + u 0 ≈ u 0 (13)
The active disturbance rejection control was introduced by This can be controlled by a simple proportional controller:
Han [9-11]. It is designed to control systems with large
uncertainty in internal dynamics and external disturbances. u 0 = k p (y r − z1 ) (14)
ADRC can estimate the totality of disturbances through an yr is the input signal reference to track.
extended state observer (ESO). It has also been simplified to the
linear form using the linear ESO, which makes it easy and The controller tuning is chosen as k p = ωc , where ωc is the
convenient to implement [11]. We consider the first-order desired closed-loop frequency [11].
system with a single input and a single output (8) to illustrate the
principle of the method. Generally, we choose ω0 between 3ωc and 7ωc, consequently
ωc is the only tuning parameter. Fig. 5 represents the ADRC
y& = f (y,d, t) + b0 u (8) schematic diagram.
Where, u and y are input and output variables. d is the
external disturbance and f (y,d, t) represents the combined
effect of internal dynamics and external disturbance and b0 is the
parameter to estimate.
The basic idea is to estimate and compensate the disturbance
parameter f (y,d, t) . Equation (8) can be written with an
augmented state-space form as:

 x& 1 = x 2 + b0 u Fig. 5. ADRC first order schematic diagram.


 x& 2 = h ; h = f& (9)
V. SYSTEM CONTROL
y = x
 1
A. Inverter Control
Or in the matrix form:
The inverter can supply 300 kW to a three-phase load
 x& = Ax + b0 Bu + Eh connected to the network. Depending on the climatic conditions,
 (10) the load will be powered totally or partially by the PV generator.
 y = Cx If the PV power is insufficient, the load takes the deficit from
0 1 1 1
t
0 the network.
Where, A =   ; B=  ; C=  ; E= 
 0 0   
0  0 1 To control the DC/AC converter, two cascaded loops are
used. The outer loop controls the DC bus voltage VDC. The inner
A state observer of (10) will estimate the derivatives of y(t) loop controls direct and quadratic currents (Igd & Igq) flowing
and f (y,d, t) since (10) is now a state in the extended state through the RL filter.
model. The Extended State Observer ESO is constructed as: 1) Current control (inner loop):
Equation (4) of the filter associated with the transformer is
z& = Az + b0 Bu + L(y − y)
ˆ
 written in ADRC canonical form as:
  β1  (11)
 ŷ = Cz ; where L =  β   dIgd
  2  = f d (Igd , d, t) + b0d u d
 dt
L is the observer gain vector. To simplify the tuning process,  (14)
the observer gains are parameterized as (β1 = 2ω0 ; β2 = ω0 2 )  dIgq = f (I , d, t) + b u
 dt q gq 0q q
[11]. Where, ω0 is the bandwidth of the observer determined by
Where:
the pole placement technique [11].
ωb ω
The estimate is more precisely by increasing the bandwidth • f d (Igd , d, t) = (− Vgd − R tot Igd + L tot Igq ) + ( b − b0d )Vcd
L tot L tot
of the observer. However, a wide bandwidth increases the
sensitivity to noise. In practice, a compromise is made between ωb ω
• f q (Igq , d, t) = (− Vgq − R tot Igq − L tot Igd ) + ( b − b0q )Vcq
the speed at which the observer tracks the states and its L tot L tot
sensitivity to sensor noise. With a properly designed ESO, z1 and
• u d = Vcd and u q = Vcq
z2 are tracking respectively y and f.
• b0d and b0q are two parameters to estimate and they
With the control law u as:
are typically chosen equally. A first approximation may be
u 0 − z2 ω
u= (12) b0d = b0q = b
b0 L tot
The original plant in (8) is reduced to a unit gain integrator.
Note:
• Quadratic current reference Iqg_ref is set to be zero, thus only
the active power is flowing through the filter and the
reactive power is null.
• Direct current reference Igd_ref is generated by the DC
voltage controller.
• The shifting angle induced by the DY transformer will be
taken into account to evaluate the reference value Uabc_ref
used for the inverter PWM block to generate the appropriate
IGBTs-Diodes switching signals (Fig. 6).
2) DC bus voltage control
The ADRC canonical form of (7) is:
The fundamental objective is to keep the error at a zero value
to obtain the maximum power point. Since the ADRC does not
require detailed knowledge of the system, a first-order model
will be adopted as the first approximation.
de
= f ( e, d, t ) + b0e u e (18)
dt
Where, u e = VDC _ ref (VDC_ref is the reference of DC bus
voltage) and b0e is a parameter to estimate.
Fig. 7 shows Simulink diagram control of MMPT based on
the ADRC-IC technique.

 dw
 = f w ( w, d, t ) + b0w u w
 dt (15)
u w = Igd
Fig. 7. ADRC_IC MPPT Simulink model
Where:
3 VI. RESULTS AND SIMULATIONS
• f w ( w, d, t ) = ωb (PPV − Vgd Igd ) − b0w Igd
CDC To evaluate the effectiveness of the control, the system is
• b0w is the parameter to estimate. subjected to a step-change in terms of irradiance from
Fig. 6 shows the control scheme applied to the inverter. 1000 w / m 2 to 800 w / m 2 at time t = 0.6 s and a second step-
B. MPPT Control change from 800 w / m 2 to 1000 w / m 2 at time t = 1.4 s . The
temperature is also varied from 25°C at time t = 1s to 45°C ,
To extract the maximum power from the PV array for each followed by a second variation from 45°C to 25°C at time
condition such as atmospheric changes (irradiation and
t = 1.8 s (Fig. 8). The parameters of the system and its control
temperature) or load variations, ADRC control combined with
the incremental conductance ADRC_IC is applied and used in this simulation are listed in Table I and Table II
compared to the classical perturb and observe P&O control. respectively.
As can be seen in Fig. 9, the power produced by the PV is
The PV power is PPV = VPV × IPV , where IPV and VPV are very stable and, it has a better dynamic performance with the
PV array output current and voltage respectively. At the MPPT ADRC-IC control compared to the conventional P&O
maximum power point MPP we have: control. The latter suffers from a lot of oscillations and higher
overshoot under rapid irradiation and temperature variations.
dPPV dI
= IPV + VPV PV = 0 (16) The DC bus voltage controlled by the ADRC follows its
dVPV dVPV
reference provided by the MPPT block. The value of the DC bus
Considering the time derivatives of the voltage and current, voltage decreases significantly if the PV temperature increases.
the error e may be written as: As we have already seen for the PV power, the behavior of the
 ∂I ∂V  DC bus voltage under rapid changes in temperature and
e = IPV + VPV  PV / PV  (17) irradiance is more stable with smaller overshoots for the ADRC-
 ∂t ∂t  IC control compared to the conventional P&O control which has
many oscillations (Fig.10).
As mentioned in earlier studies [7-12], the ADRC is one of
the more robust control methods. It is capable of providing good
control even if the system is subject to fluctuations in its internal
or external parameters. It does not require accurate knowledge
of the system.
The 300 kW load is fully supplied by the PV generator as
long as the standard conditions are met (1000 w/m2 and 25°C).
If this is not the case, the power deficit is made up by the
network. Similarly, if there is no load or if the load is less than
300 kW, the PV generator injects the surplus power directly into
the network. To keep a unit power factor, the reactive power
exchange with the electrical network is null (Fig. 11). This is
Fig. 6. Inverter control schematic diagram illustrated by the current curve at the output of the transformer
(bus 1), which is practically sinusoidal, with no phase shift TABLE II. CONTROL PARAMETERS
concerning the voltage as expected by the inverter control (Fig. Parameter Value
12). MPPT (ADRC-IC) b0e = -0.2 ; kP = 50 ; ωo = 350
DC bus voltage b0w = -519.4 ; kP = 50 ; ωo = 135
Current loop b0d = b0q =476 ; kP = 300 ; ωo = 1500

VII. CONCLUSION
In this work, a model of a single-stage grid-connected
photovoltaic system is developed. The model is subjected to
varying atmospheric conditions to show the effectiveness of the
controls used. An active disturbance rejection control is
presented and applied to control the entire system. MMPT
Fig. 8. Irradiation and temperature variations.
control techniques for the photovoltaic system are analyzed and
evaluated. The simulation results showed the good performance
of MPPT control with ADRC-IC compared to P&O in terms of
response time, efficiency and stability.
PV Power (KW)

REFERENCES
[1] Liu, L., Meng, X., & Liu, C. (2016). A review of maximum power point
tracking methods of the PV power system at uniform and partial shading.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 53, 1500–1507.
doi:10.1016/j.rser.2015.09.065.
[2] Anya, I. F., Saha, C., Ahmed, H., Huda, M. N., & Rajbhandari, S.
Fig. 9. PV output power with ADRC-IC and P&O control. (2019). Performance Improvement of Perturb and Observe Maximum
Power Point Tracking Technique for Solar PV Applications. Green
Energy and Technology, 283–301. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-05578-3_10
[3] A. Durusu, I. Nakir, A. Ajder, R. Ayaz, H. Akca, M. Tanrioven,
"Performance Comparison of Widely-Used Maximum Power Point
Tracker Algorithms under Real Environmental Conditions," Advances in
(V)

Electrical and Computer Engineering, vol.14, no.3, pp.89-94, 2014,

dc
U

doi:10.4316/AECE.2014.03011
[4] G. Hsieh, H. Hsieh, C. Tsai and C. Wang, "Photovoltaic Power-
Increment-Aided Incremental-Conductance MPPT With Two-Phased
Tracking," in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 28, no. 6, pp.
2895-2911, June 2013, DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2012.2227279.
Fig. 10. DC bus voltage. [5] Anh, H. P. H. (2014). Implementation of supervisory controller for solar
PV microgrid system using adaptive neural model. International Journal
of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, 63, 1023–1029.
doi:10.1016/j.ijepes.2014.06.068.
P & Q (KW & KVAR)

[6] N. Altin, "Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Controller Based Maximum

Power Point Tracking in Photovoltaic Systems," Advances in Electrical
and Computer Engineering, vol.13, no.3, pp.65-70, 2013,
doi:10.4316/AECE.2013.03011.
[7] A. Boukhriss, T. Nasser, A. Essadki, A. Boualouch, “Active disturbance
rejection control for DFIG based wind farms under unbalanced grid
Fig. 11. Active power in Bus 1 & 2 and reactive power in Bus 1 voltage,” International Review on Modelling and Simulations (IREMOS),
vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 95-105, 2014, doi.org/10.15866/iremos.v7i1.265.
[8] A. Boukhriss, "Active Disturbance Rejection Control Applied to a Three-
Phase Grid-Connected Photovoltaic System," Advances in Electrical and
Computer Engineering, vol.22, no.1, pp.87-94, 2022,
doi:10.4316/AECE.2022.01010
[9] Z. Gao, Y. Huang, J. Han, “An alternative paradigm for control system
design,” Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Conference on Decision and
Control (Cat. No.01CH37228), pp. 4578-4585 vol.5, 2001, DOI:
10.1109/CDC.2001.980926.
[10] J. Han, “From PID to active disturbance rejection control,” in IEEE
Fig. 12. Current and voltage in Bus 1 Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 900-906, March
2009, DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2008.2011621.
[11] Z. Gao, “Scaling and bandwidth-parameterization based controller
TABLE I. SYSTEM PARAMETERS
tuning,” Proceedings of the 2003 American Control Conference, pp.
Parameter Value 4989-4996, 2003, DOI: 10.1109/ACC.2003.1242516.
Filter Rg = 2.4 mΩ ; Lg = 0.76 mH [12] A. Boukhriss, A. Essadki, A. Bouallouch, T. Nasser, “Maximization of
DC bus voltage CDC = 12 mF generated power from wind energy conversion systems using a doubly fed
induction generator with active disturbance rejection control,” Second
T1 : (320 KVA – 380V / 25 KV- ∆Y )
Transformer World Conference on Complex Systems (WCCS), pp. 330-335, 2014.
T2 : (50 MVA – 25 KV / 120 KV- Y∆)
DOI: 10.1109/ICoCS.2014.7060907.
Simulink solver Ode23t – Step size 5µs