Sliding-mode control of bidirectional dc-dc converter for supercapacitor energy storage applications

Abstract

A great interest in the last years has been paid in the literature to the application of supercapacitors in many existing or innovative systems. Bidirectional dc-dc converters chopper are intrinsic candidates to couple the supercapacitor devices to electric power systems. It might be very useful to adopt coupled-inductor configurations for increasing efficiency against high-voltage step-up ratio. In the paper, a sliding mode control technique is proposed in order to improve the performances of a certain dc-dc bidirectional converter topology. A numerical application is also performed with respect to a simple dc tramway system with a stationary supercapacitor storage device. The numerical results allow to remark that the sliding mode control is able to track a requested trajectory, which is determined by an optimization technique and exhibits the required robustness against the uncertainties and disturbances.