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The quality of electric power is a key factor for the electricity supply service. It defines how good the characteristics of the supplied power meet the standard ones. Among several other power quality issues, the harmonics are of more and more concern over the last decades. This is essentially due to the widespread use of electronic components. This thesis focuses on the development of a voltage active power filter implementing a new selective harmonics compensation algorithm. The first design is described as following: band-pass filters decompose the measured voltage signal as a sum of different harmonics voltages; PLLs (frequency-tuned) transform of the oscillating signals into two orthogonal and rotating components (dq-transform). The dq-components of each harmonic are controlled to zero using standard PI-controllers and the compensating harmonics waves are generated via the inverse PLL. All the harmonics compensating waves are superimposed and added to the fundamental reference signal. This represents the final control signal of the inverter. Implemented in the MATLAB-SIMULINK simulation environment, this foreseen methodology depicted as major issue the control stability especially when the system frequency differs from the rated 50-Hertz frequency. This is the reason why a second design has been proposed. The major improvement is done on the harmonics detection stability by replacing the PLLs frames by the well-known internal frame of the fundamental voltage of the controlled inverter. After the convincing theoretical results from the simulations, the method is implemented and validated experimentally on a test rig in the lab. The two key features of the developed active power filter (APF) are: 1)Its ability to be used as a standalone power unit that compensates by itself the harmonics that could appear in the system while generating the fundamental voltage necessary to build up the micro-grid. 2)Its ability to serve as a full grid-tied power element that not only mitigates the voltages harmonics on the coupled grid but also supports the grid by controlling the exchanged active and reactive powers between the inverter and the grid. In addition to the developed harmonic mitigation technique, a new grid synchronization method has been proposed along with a new power control algorithm combined with a grid impedance estimator for grid-tied inverter. Further investigations and development are required for three-phase unbalance voltage systems as well as for single-phase voltage power system for low power grids.

In order to identify and to track the phase angle and magnitude of the grid voltage, several synchronization methods exist, among which the phase-locked loop (PLL) algorithm is the most popular. This paper presents a new synchronization method for grid-tied voltage source inverters (VSIs) based on the intrinsic inverter synchronous reference frame. The absolute phase angle of the grid voltage is not required but its voltage direct and quadrature components into the well-known inverter frame. The advantages of this method is its low computational load with a reduced number of control parameters, as well as its robustness and effectiveness. This property makes it very convenient for embedded control systems with limited computing resources. Simulations and experimental test results are presented to prove the performance of the proposed method.

Many automatic control applications such as wide scale power grid management and local power conditioning rely on the fast and accurate detection of the voltage signal phase and amplitude. These information are almost all the time given by the Phase –locked Loop (PLL) systems and can be single-phase or three-phase and have many different structures. Many single-phase PLLs core structure are based on the regulation to zero of the voltage direct component in the rotating d-q frame obtained through the Park-transform. Their accuracy and dynamic rely on how quick and accurate the second voltage’s component in the static α-β frame is estimated. This paper presents a new single-phase PLL structure, also based on the same core structure as described before, but implementing a novel voltage β-component generation. A brief review of some single-phase PLLs is made, then the proposed novel PLL structure is detailed and its performance is compared with that of the other PLL’s taking into consideration the following signal disturbances: amplitude variations, phase step variation and frequency fluctuations as well as harmonic distortion.

Comparative studies of different single-phase phase-locked loops (PLL) algorithms have been made. They show that the PLL based on sample delay (dPLL), presents the lowest computational load and is as robust as the three-phase synchronous reference frame PLL dqPLL by input signal amplitude and phase variations. Its weakness appears when the input signal frequency differs from its rated frequency: It depicts a steady error on the calculated signal phase-angle. After a brief review of the dqPLL which constitutes debase structure of the dPLL, the following work will present three methods that improve the phase detection accuracy of dPLL. It is shown that the modifications brought in the original structure do not influence the robustness and stability of the algorithm but reduce the phase angle offset error by input signal frequency variation. This is corroborated by tests including not only the fundamental input voltage disturbance like amplitude, phase and frequency variation but also harmonic voltage distortion.

It is now well known that the quality of electric power is a key factor for the electricity service. It defines how good the characteristics (amplitude and frequency) of the supplied power meet the rated ones. Voltage dip (or sag) and swell, short and long interruptions, voltage spike, under and over voltage, harmonic distortion, voltage unbalance are the common power quality problems. Among these last, the harmonics issue is getting more and more important over the last decades and this trend will surely continue its race. This is essentially due to the widespread use of electronic components in electric equipment: it changes the nature of the electric loads from linear to non-linear and makes them, on the one hand, responsible for the harmonics generation in the power grid but very sensitive to the power quality problems on the other hand.

L’optimisation énergétique des procédés de transformation constitue une des réponses les plus efficaces et adoptées face aux nouvelles contraintes européennes dans le secteur de l’énergie et de l’environnement. Ce travail présente comment la brasserie artisanale de Rulles (PME agro-alimentaire) peut, par une installation de biométhanisation couplée à une unité de micro-cogénération, faire de la dépollution de ses rejets d’eaux usées une production énergétique. Le bioréacteur aura comme matière première les eaux usées de la brasserie et produira du biogaz et des eaux quasiment non nocives pour l’environnement. Le biogaz produit servira de carburant pour l’unité de cogénération dont l’énergie produite sera réutilisée. Des unités de stockage tant pour la chaleur que pour le biogaz sont des éléments clés envisagés pour assurer un meilleur fonctionnement du système . Une telle installation remplira donc une double fonction : l’épuration des eaux usées d’une part et la production d’énergie d’autre part.

The European Union (EU) intends to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions to 80-95 % below 1990 levels by 2050. To achieve this goal, the EU focuses on higher energy efficiency mainly within the building sector and a share of renewable energy sources (RES) of around 30 % in gross final energy consumption by 2030. In this context, the concept of nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) is both an emerging and relevant research area. Balancing energy consumption with on-site renewable energy production in a cost-effective manner requires to develop suitable energy management systems (EMS) using demandside management strategies. This thesis develops an EMS using certainty equivalent (CE) economic model predictive control (EMPC) to optimally operate the building energy system with respect to varying electricity prices. The proposed framework is a comprehensive mixed integer linear programming model that uses suitable linearised grey box models and purely data-driven model approaches to describe the system dynamics. For this purpose, a laboratory prototype is available, which is capable of covering most building-relevant types of energy, namely thermal and electrical energy. Thermal energy for space heating, space cooling and domestic hot water is buffered in thermal energy storage systems. A dual source heat pump provides thermal energy for space heating and domestic hot water, whereas an underground ice storage covers space cooling. The environmental energy sources of the heat pump are ice storage or wind infrared sensitive collectors. The collectors are further used to regenerate the ice storage. Photovoltaic panels produce electrical energy which can be stored in a battery storage system. The electrical energy system is capable of selling and buying electricity from the public power grid. The laboratory test bench interacts with a virtual building model which is integrated into the building simulation software TRNSYS Simulation Studio. The EMS prototype is tested and validated on the basis of various simulations and under close to real-life laboratory conditions. The different test scenarios are generated using the typical day approach for each season.

As early as the end of the 1970s, heat pumps in combination with glycol-based large-area combined radiation environmental heat absorbers were developed as evaporators which, in comparison to forced convection-based air heat pumps, not only used ambient energy but also solar energy as an energy source. However, due to the falling oil prices after the oil crisis, this technology, which was for the most part not yet economical and moreover required large absorber surfaces, could not prevail. Due to the significant re-duction in the heating requirement of new buildings, nowadays much smaller absorber surfaces are needed in combination with a heat pump, which leads to a renewed interest in the combination of heat pumps and absorbers. Above all, the combination of thermal absorber, based on free convection and radiation, and photovoltaic (PV) in one module (PVT module), may be an alternative to forced convection-based air heat pumps. The use of solar energy as the heat source of the heat pump leads one to expect higher coef-ficients of performance by achieving higher evaporation temperatures than conventional forced convection-based air heat pumps. Numerous publications describe the market potential of solar hybrid modules with di-rect evaporation (PVT-direct module), and several theoretical studies describe con-structive approaches and related calculations. However, to date, there is still no practi-cal implementation of a PVT hybrid module in combination with a module-integrated direct evaporation of the natural refrigerant CO2 in microchannels. So far, no experi-mental studies on CO2-PVT-based heat pump systems with direct evaporation have been carried out by research institutions. Thus, the proof of the constructive and func-tional feasibility of a CO2-based PVT-direct module as well as the energetic feasibility of the PVT-based CO2 heat pump system is still a desideratum. The three objectives of this work can be summarized as follows: 1. Development and production of the PVT-direct module for the analysis of the constructional feasibility of the PVT-direct module 2. Experimental investigation of the PVT-direct module for the analysis of both the thermal and electrical functional feasibility of the PVT-direct module 3. Analysis of the energetic feasibility of the PVT-based CO2 heat pump system