A digital signal processor controlled smart battery charger for photovoltaic power systems

An off-grid photovoltaic power system requires an energy storage system, especially batteries, for mitigation of variability and intermittency problems, and for assured service reliability and availability. The longevity and reliability of such batteries depend on the effectiveness of the charging system. This paper presents the modelling, simulation and hardware implementation of a four-stage switch-mode charger based on the single-ended primary inductance converter. The digital signal processor based controller implements algorithms for the system's power balance control, maximum power point tracking to improve charging speed and efficiency, four-stage optimal charging, and system's protection. The protection algorithm provides over-charge, overdischarge, over-temperature and short circuit protection capabilities. The proposed system has the following advantages: ability to continuously charge the batteries even at reduced solar irradiation, higher efficiency, and use of adaptive thermally compensated set points for optimum performance. A prototype is built and experimental results are presented to validate the simulation results.

Power conversion technology in the smart grid and EV

The chapter presents a dynamical model and power conversion technology of electric vehicles (EVs) used in smart grids. The efficient power conversion of EVs in smart grids depends on the operation of bi-directional converters as these EVs need to be either charged or discharged. In this chapter, the mathematical model of a bi-directional converter used in EVs is developed and a nonlinear controller is designed to facilitate the power conversion in the smart grid environments. Since the power conversion of EVs in smart grids requires the communication, a nonlinear partial feedback linearising distributed controller based on the communication with different EVs is proposed to ensure high power quality and system stability.

Robust adaptive backstepping controller design for DC-DC buck converters with external disturbances

In modern power electronic systems, DC-DC converter is one of the main controlled power sources for driving DC systems. But the inherent nonlinear and time-varying characteristics often result in some difficulties mostly related to the control issue. This paper presents a robust nonlinear adaptive controller design with a recursive methodology based on the pulse width modulation (PWM) to drive a DC-DC buck converter. The proposed controller is designed based on the dynamical model of the buck converter where all parameters within the model are assumed as unknown. These unknown parameters are estimated through the adaptation laws and the stability of these laws are ensured by formulating suitable control Lyapunov functions (CLFs) at different stages. The proposed control scheme also provides robustness against external disturbances as these disturbances are considered within the model. One of the main features of the proposed scheme is that it overcomes the over-parameterization problems of unknown parameters which usually appear in some conventional adaptive methods. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified through the simulation results and compared to that of an existing adaptive backstepping controller. Simulation results clearly indicate the performance improvement in terms of a faster output voltage tracking response.