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This paper presents an analysis of the fault ride-through requirements established in grid codes around the world, that conventional power plants should comply, in order to be able to be connected to the transmission network. It describes the causes of this requirement, the way it is currently applied in most electric utilities, and the effect that power plant auxiliaries have in the assessment of this important characteristic. It was found that auxiliaries have a very important effect in the fault ride-through capability of the power plant, and should therefore be explicitly represented in those cases. In addition, it was observed that, in the way this requirement is currently verified, it can be contradictory to stability criteria, and this requires improving the methods of verifying the fault ride-through capability of the plant, so as to conciliate this aspect with stability criteria.

A maximum power point tracking (MPPT) scheme based on a general pulse width modulation (PWM) modulator is presented. The purpose of the scheme is that switching converter behaves as a resistor seen by the photovoltaic module, it also regulates the input voltage to a desired value. The MPPT scheme is applied to a noncascading converter topology, which has the characteristic of processing a fraction of the total power generated.