Published Paper Details:

The continual rise in electricity demand, combined with serious environmental problems created by traditional energy systems have been driving societies towards the use of renewable energy sources. However, the natural variability of some renewable sources due to their strong dependence on the weather conditions result to a high fluctuated output power, which impacts on the local loads that are sensitive to pulsating power. Hence, there is a need to support these sources by use of energy storage device, where it either injects its stored energy or absorbs the excess energy during the transients in the renewable source; resulting in a smooth output power to the load. In this paper, the control of a bidirectional converter to interface an ultra capacitor as storage device to renewable energy systems is discussed. The controller of the converter system has been designed and simulated based on the integration of both Current Mode Control (CMC) and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) methods. The controller performance is tested under different modes of operating conditions in bidirectional converter using MATLAB/Simulink simulation.