Distributed PV-battery architectures with reconfigurable power conversion units

A family of single-stage converters called Reconfigurable Solar Converter (RSC) is presented for integration of energy storage with a PV system where ramp-rate control and peak-shifting is desired. An algorithm designed to reduce the variability of photovoltaic (PV) power output by using a battery demonstrates the PV power output smoothing. The purpose of the battery is to add power to the PV output (or subtract power from the PV output) to smooth out the fast variations of the PV power that occur during periods with transient cloud shadows on the PV array. The proposed solution potentially requires minimal complexity and modifications to the PV converter for PV-battery systems application, and it will provide new architectures and utilization methods for achieving more efficient and more controllable PV farms. These architectures will potentially create flexible, retrofit and expandable platforms for current and future PV power plants.