Inverter Testing and Evaluation According to the Brazilian Standards; Experiences Gained in the First Two Years of Operation of the First Brazilian Laboratory Equiped for This Purpose
Abstract
This work presents the experience gained with the testing of photovoltaic grid-tie inverters to evaluate their compliance with the Brazilian standards. The experience was obtained during the first two years at the Laboratory of Photovoltaic Systems of the Institute of Energy and Environment of the University of São Paulo - LSF/IEE/USP, the first laboratory in Brazil equipped to perform these tests. The approach focus on the experiences with inverters that did not comply with the Brazilian standards concerning one or more of its aspects, the difficulties encountered during the tests, and the firmware implementation needed to solve inverter nonconformity with the standards. To back up the analysis, the laboratory infrastructure is briefly described, mostly to establish the power range and main characteristics of the inverters that can be tested using the LSF infrastructure. Keywords: Grid tied inverter, equipment evaluation, Brazilian standard.