Fast and accurate grid signal frequency estimation is a very important issue in the control of renewable energy systems. Important factors that influence the estimation accuracy include the A/D converter parameters in the inverter control system. This paper presents the influence of the number of A/D converter bits b, the phase shift of the grid signal relative to the time window, the width of the time window relative to the grid signal period (expressed as a cycle in range (CiR) parameter) and the number of N samples obtained in this window with the A/D converter on the developed estimation method results. An increase in the number b by 8 decreases the estimation error by approximately 256 times. The largest estimation error occurs when the signal module maximum is in the time window center (for small values of CiR) or when the signal value is zero in the time window center (for large values of CiR). In practical applications, the dominant component of the frequency estimation error is the error caused by the quantization noise, and its range is from approximately 8×10-10 to 6×10-4.

Quality of energy produced in renewable energy systems has to be at the high level specified by respective standards and directives. One of the most important factors affecting quality is the estimation accuracy of grid signal parameters. This paper presents a method of a very fast and accurate amplitude and phase grid signal estimation using the Fast Fourier Transform procedure and maximum decay side-lobes windows. The most important features of the method are elimination of the impact associated with the conjugate’s component on the results and its straightforward implementation. Moreover, the measurement time is very short ‒ even far less than one period of the grid signal. The influence of harmonics on the results is reduced by using a bandpass pre-filter. Even using a 40 dB FIR pre-filter for the grid signal with THD ≈ 38%, SNR ≈ 53 dB and a 20‒30% slow decay exponential drift the maximum estimation errors in a real-time DSP system for 512 samples are approximately 1% for the amplitude and approximately 8.5・10‒2 rad for the phase, respectively. The errors are smaller by several orders of magnitude with using more accurate pre-filters.