Control of a Bidirectional Converter to Interface

Ultracapacitor with Renewable Energy Sources

M.A. Abdullah, A.H.M. Yatim , C.W. Tan , A.S. Samosir
Department of Energy Conversion, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81300 Skudai,
Johor, Malaysia
aaamajid2@live.utm.my
Abstract- This paper highlights the controller of a bidirectional
converter to interface an ultracapacitor as storage device to
renewable energy systems. Ultracapacitors are typically used in
renewable energy systems to improve the system's reliability and
energy conversion efficiency. The controller of the converter
system has been designed and simulated based on the integration
of both Current Mode Control and Linear Quadratic Regulator
methods. The controller performance is tested under different
modes of operating conditions in bidirectional converter using
MATLAB/Simulink simulation package. The simulation results
show that a good DC bus voltage regulation is achieved in the
tested conditions. In addition to that, the controller ensures
smooth transition between the buck and boost modes of the
bidirectional converter operation.
Keywordsbidirectional converter; ultracapacitor; peak current
mode control; linearquadratic regulator.

I.

Introduction

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. Besides being environmentally
friendly, renewable energy sources are continually renewed by
the cycle of nature and are considered to be practically
inexhaustible [1-4]. As a result, the future of these sources as a
typical alternative for the traditional sources looks very bright.
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 [5-6]. Moreover, the
renewable sources generated power does not always match the
demanded load 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 [7-9].
Amongst storage devices, ultracapacitor is preferred due to
its long life-time, good electrical behaviour and to its relatively
low initial cost in comparison with modern batteries [10]. In
addition, it is positively characterized by its high power
density, low losses while charging and discharging, and its
very low equivalent series resistor (ESR) which allows it to
deliver and absorb very high currents and to be charged very
quickly [11-12]. Furthermore, ultracapacitor can provide large
transient power instantly [13]. Consequently, the use of
ultracapacitor as a storage element increases the effectiveness

978-1-4673-4569-9/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

of the renewable energy source utilization and also improves

the capability of dealing with steady-state and transient
dynamics.
Connecting the renewable source and the ultracapacitor
requires a power converter and a DC link. The converter must
have the capability to allow both directions of power flow
between the ultracapacitor and the DC link, and also the ability
to increase or decrease the voltage level in each power flow
direction; since the voltage level of the ultracapacitor and the
DC link are different. Therefore, a bidirectional DC-DC
converter is used. In bidirectional DC-DC converters, there are
two modes of operation. The first mode is the boost mode,
where the ultracapacitor is discharged to a higher voltage level
at the DC link; in the second mode, namely the buck mode;
here the excess power from the renewable source charges
ultracapacitor.
Various control methods have been proposed in the
literature to interface renewable energy sources with a storage
device using a bidirectional converter. The authors in reference
[13] applied the dynamic evolution control method to interface
a fuel cell and the ultracapacitor. In literature [5], the PI
controller was designed for the integration of wind energy
conversion system and ultracapacitor. The current programmed
mode (CPM) duty ratio control and linear PI compensator was
reported in [14] for controlling a bidirectional converter
interfacing wind energy conversion and battery storage system.
A combination of both fuzzy and sliding-mode control
strategies to inteface the wind energy conversion system and
the storage device has been proposed in [15]. Different from
that available in the literature, the proposed controller in this
paper introduces feedback paths that are calculated optimally
to minimize an associated cost function, which is expected to
improve the dynamic performance of the system.
Due to its simplicity, high bandwidth, and low
implementation cost , current mode control (CMC) approach is
popular in controlling the power electronic converters [16].
Among the different types available for CMC, Peak current
mode control (PCMC) is the most common one in which the
peak value of the inductor current is sensed and compared with
the current reference for the generation of the PWM signal
[17]. Another control method that is most cited for controlling
the PWM converters is linear quadratic regulator (LQR)
control [18]. Since the controller feedback gain-vector is
determined optimally in LQR, the designers can guarantee that
the converter has good closed-loop behaviour, and is relatively
insensitive to system parameter variations or external

673

disturbances. In addition, LQR controllers can be applied with

independence of the order of the system, and their design can
be straightforwardly calculated from the matrices of the
systems small-signal model [19]. Combining the two methods
(CMC and LQR) has been done in many studies [3, 19]. The
combination indicates that a good response and disturbance
rejection were achieved in the tested conditions.

renewable energy source is modelled as a current source

connected to the DC bus.
Based on the state space averaging method [26], the
resulted open-loop model of the boost converter is:

d
dt

This paper describes the design of a controller based on the

basis of CMC and LQR control techniques. In the proposed
controller, the outer loop of the CMC is modified to include the
feedback gains of the LQR. The objective of the converter
controller is to maintain the DC bus voltage at a relatively
constant stream, regardless of the load switching and
environmental conditions changes.

II.

Modeling of the Ultracapacitor and

Bidirectional DC-DC Converter

A comparison of ultracapacitor circuit models has

previously been made in reference [20]. In this paper, the
equivalent circuit of ultracapacitor model as reported in [13,
21] is applied to simulate the ultracapacitor. As represented in
Fig.1, the model consists of a capacitance Cuc , an equivalent
parallel resistance R p , and an equivalent series resistance Rs .

iL 0
1 D
vo
C

Vin

(1 D ) L

Vin

(1 D ) 2 RoC

(1 D)
iL
L
1 v
o
RoC
1
L
0

(1)

0 d

vin
1

C io

where C is the DC bus capacitance and

resistance.

Ro is the load

To derive the current-mode controlled model of the boost

converter, the new continuous time (NCT) model of the PCMC
in [27-28] is used. It is generally accepted due to its simplicity
and accuracy [27, 29]. The block diagram of NCT model is
represented in Fig. 2, where vin , vo , iL and d are the
perturbations of the input voltage, output voltage, inductor
current, and the duly-cycle of the power stage, respectively.
The variable

vc

is the perturbation of the reference voltage of

the current loop. In this study,

output.

vc

is the LQR controller

Ri is the effective linear gain from the sensed current

to the comparator input. k f and k r are the feedforward and

feedback gains, and they are different for the different for each

Fig. 1. The electrical circuit of ultracapacitor-bidirectional DC-DC converter

topology.

To realize the reversible direction of power flow in

bidirectional DC-DC converters, the switch should ideally
carry the current in both directions. Therefore, it is usually
implemented with a unidirectional semiconductor power
switch connected in parallel to a diode [22]. In the first
direction, the converter transfers the energy from the
ultracapacitor to the DC bus when starting up the renewable
generation system, and during the transient load conditions.
When there is an excess energy at the DC bus, the converter
charges the ultracapacitor in its low-side.
According to literature [23], the buck charging and boost
discharging current modes share the same power plant transfer
function, therefore, sharing a unified controller is tolerable.
The unified controller concept means one controller can be
used for both switches, whereby they are controlled in a
complementary fashion [13, 24]. In this work, the boost mode
of operation is selected for the purpose of designing the
controller. Hence, the small-signal model of the boost
converter is derived. Similar to the study made in [25], the

different type of converters. H i is the sampling gain which is

used to model the sampling action in the current loop, and for
controller design purpose it is taken as a unity.
The modulator gain

Fm

is the ac gain from the error

current signal to the duty-cycle.

expressed as:

Fm

k f and k r can be

Fm

1
( M 1 M c )Ts

(2)

kf

Ts Ri
2L

(3)

kr

D2Ts Ri
2L

(4)

where M 1 is the rising slope of the inductor current, M c

is the slope of the artificial ramp signal that is used for slope
compensation. It is stated in [30] that there is an inherent
stability when D 0.5 for all types of converters. In order to
guarantee the controller stability for all ranges of the duty-

674

cycle, an artificial ramp with slope

M c 0.5M 2 has

0 21 x b1 21
A
x a 22

vin
C 12 0 11 0 11

to be

added ( M 2 ) is the falling slope of the inductor current). Ts is

the switching period. As it is very small, the k r can be
neglected.

Aa

^
Vin

Power Stage
^
iL

^
d
K

Fm

iL

vref

Small signal model

of the open loop
CMC boost
converter

-k3 *A(s)

vo

-k1

Kr

-k2

Fig. 3. The small signal model of closed-loop CMC PWM boost converter with
linear feedback control.

^v
c
Fig. 2. The small-signal model of PCMC converter.

The state-space representation for the small signal

analysis can be obtained by replacing the term d in (1) with
its value in (5). The resulted PCMC model of the boost is:

FmVin Ri

d iL
(1 D) L
1 D
FmVin Ri
dt vo

C
(1 D) 2 RoC
FmVin
1 Fm K f Vin

(1 D) L
L (1 D) L

Fm K f Vin
FmVin
2
(1 D) RoC (1 D) 2 RoC

III.

b 3a

vin

io

Ri

He (s)

b 2a

(5)
^
v
o

(8)

b 2
0
b 3
21 vc 21 vref 21 io
11
11
0
I 11
0

Based on Fig. 2, when k r is neglected, the duty ratio law

can be expressed as:

d Fm ( RiiL k f vin vc )

b1a

D 1
L iL

1 vo
RoC

0 vc
v
1 in
i
C o

In addition, we have

(6)

In order to design the LQR system, the formulation of the

following cost function is considered

(x

T
a

Qx a vc2 )dt

(10)

where Q is a 3 3 symmetric positive definite matrix

and is a positive scalar. Once Q and are chosen, the
optimal control problem reduces to finding the weights in the
vector K a that minimizes (10). It can be shown that the
optimal weight vector

the

K a is given by [31]:

K a 1bT2a S

(11)

As in [32], the matrix Q is chosen to be:

I 22
Q
012

(7)

(9)

Ca

As aforementioned, the objective of the controller in this

paper is to ensure a good voltage regulation at the DC bus.
Thus, the small signal model of the CMC boost converter is
augmented to include the new feedbacks from the state
variables of the converter. In addition, a new state variable, the
error between the reference and the output voltage, is added, as
shown in Fig. 3.

a x
With the new state-space vector x
augmented small-signal model can be written as,

vo C 0x a

The Linear Quadratic RegulatorCurrent

Mode Controlled Model

x3 vref vo vref Cx

where the matrices A and B are obtained from the small signal
state-space model of the CMC PWM DC-DC boost converter
system in (6). C 0 1 .

IV.

012
q

(12)

Simulation Results and Discussion

In this section, the MATLAB/Simulink simulation results

for different operation modes of the bidirectional converter that
interfaces the ultracapacitor to the DC bus are depicted and
discussed. The simulated system diagram is shown in Fig. 4,

675

and the used parameters for the converter and the ultracapacitor
are listed in Table I. The initial voltage of the capacitor is 48V,
and the LQR-CMC controller is designed with

0.1 .

q 1 109 and

TABLE I: PARAMETERS OF THE SIMULATED SYSTEM.

Ro

Vo

Cuc

Rs

Rp

(mH)

(F)

()

(V)

(F)

(m)

()

0.1

150

20

100

165

1109

DC Bus

Ultracapacitor

DC-DC
Bidirectional
Converter

Load

Io

Iuc

(b)
Fig. 5. The responses of a step variation in the load current from 5 A to 15 A
and then to 5 A of: (a) Load and ultracapacitor currents (Io, Iuc), (b) Output
and reference voltages (Vo, Vref).

I source

In the second case of simulation test, shown in Fig. 6 (a)

and (b), the output voltage reference was changed from 100 V

Fig. 4. The block diagram of the proposed interfacing system.

The simulation results for the first case system test are
shown in Fig. 5, where the renewable source current was
maintained fixed at 10 A while the load current was changed in
steps from 5 A to 15 A and then to 5 A. As illustrated in the
Fig. 5(a), in the first interval (between t=0 and t=0.02 s) the
renewable source covered the load demand and injected its
excess current to the ultracapacitor. In this interval, the
bidirectional converter operated in a buck mode. However,
when an additional 10 A was required by the load (between
t=0.02 and t=0.05 s), the renewable source was not able to
provide the full load demand. Thus, in this interval, the
bidirectional converter switched to a boost mode to discharge
the ultracapacitor and supply the extra load demand (5 A).
When the load current returned to its initial value (between
t=0.05 and t=0.08 s), the bidirectional converter softly changed
its mode of operation into the buck mode. Fig. 5(b) depicts the
DC bus voltage. As can be seen, it was regulated at the desired
value (100 V) regardless of the changes that happened in the
load current. The figure clearly shows that the two modes of
the converter operation altered softly.

to 110 V and back to 90 V. In addition, source was changed

from 0 A to 10 A at time of 0.04 s. Referring to the figures, it
can be seen that before at t = 0.04 s the load current was
completely provided by the ultracapacitor, and the converter
was in the boost mode operation. Nevertheless, it was
operating in the buck mode, by charging the ultracapacitor,
during the remainder of the time. In both modes, the controller
ensures good output voltage and current regulations . The
output voltage tracked the reference accurately and smoothly.
The transient time upon all changes was less than 7 ms, while
the peak overshoot resulted from the current change was
almost 8%.

(a)

(a)

676

[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]

[9]

[10]
(b)
Fig. 6. The responses of a step variation in the output voltage reference from
100 V to 110 V and then to 90 V of: (a) Load and ultracapacitor currents (Io,
Iuc), (b) Output and ultracapacitor voltages (Vo, Vuc).

V.

Conclusion

This paper has include the disccusion of a new control

method based on LQR and CMC control for a bidirectional
DC-DC converter that interfaces ultracapacitor energy storage
to a renewable energy system. The LQR-CMC method has
been successfully applied to control the bidirectional converter
in the case of boost and buck modes. The objectives of the
controller were to regulate the output voltage and to achieve a
smooth transition between the two operation modes of the
bidirectional converter, namely buck and boost modes. In
addition, the proposed controller ensures continuous power
supply the load, regardless of the load and renewable energy
power changes. In short, the proposed controller is capable of
increasing the reliability and energy conversion efficiency of
renewable energy systems.

VI. Acknowledgements

REFERENCES

[2]
[3]

[12]

[13]

[14]
[15]

[16]
[17]

The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Higher

Education, Malaysia (MOHE), Research Management Centre
(UTM-RMC), and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) for
their support. This work was funded by Vote No.
R.J130000.7823.4F038 grant.

[1]

[11]

[18]
[19]

[20]

M. A. Abdullah, et al., "A study of maximum power point tracking

algorithms for wind energy system," in 2011 IEEE First Conference
on Clean Energy and Technology (CET), Kuala Lumpur Malaysia,
2011, pp. 321-326.
M. A. Abdullah, et al., "A review of maximum power point
tracking algorithms for wind energy systems," Renewable and
Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 16, pp. 3220-3227, 2012.
M. A. Abdullah, et al., "Input Current Control of Boost Converters
using Current-Mode Controller Integrated with Linear Quadratic
Regulator," International Journal of Renewable Energy Research
(IJRER), vol. 2, pp. 262-268, 2012.

[21]
[22]
[23]

677

C. N. Bhende, et al., "Permanent Magnet Synchronous GeneratorBased Standalone Wind Energy Supply System," IEEE
Transactions on Sustainable Energy, vol. 2, pp. 361-373, 2011.
M. Bottu, et al., "Design of a Conditioner for smoothing wind
turbine output power," in North American Power Symposium
(NAPS), 2010, 2010, pp. 1-6.
M. A. G. de Brito, et al., "Evaluation of the Main MPPT
Techniques for Photovoltaic Applications," IEEE Transactions on
Industrial Electronics, vol. 60, pp. 1156-1167, 2013.
A. A. Hussein, et al., "Distributed Battery Micro-Storage Systems
Design and Operation in a Deregulated Electricity Market," IEEE
Transactions on Sustainable Energy,, vol. 3, pp. 545-556, 2012.
M. H. Nehrir, et al., "A Review of Hybrid Renewable/Alternative
Energy Systems for Electric Power Generation: Configurations,
Control, and Applications," IEEE Transactions on Sustainable
Energy, vol. 2, pp. 392-403, 2011.
M. L. Rahman, et al., "Hybrid Power Generation System Using
Offshore-Wind Turbine and Tidal Turbine for Power Fluctuation
Compensation (HOT-PC)," IEEE Transactions on Sustainable
Energy, vol. 1, pp. 92-98, 2010.
J. Leuchter, "Bi-Directional DC - DC Converters for Battery
Buffers with Supercapacitor " in Energy Storage in the Emerging
Era of Smart Grids, R. Carbone, Ed., ed: InTech, 2011.
Y. Zhao, et al., "Design on Triple Bi-directional DC/DC Converter
Used for Power Flow Control of Energy Storage in Wind Power
System Communication Systems and Information Technology."
vol. 100, M. Ma, Ed., ed: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011, pp. 714.
J. Lopes, et al., "Optimal sizing of batteries and ultracapacitors for
fuel cell electric vehicles," in IECON 2011 - 37th Annual
Conference on IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2011, pp. 46034608.
A. S. Samosir and A. H. M. Yatim, "Implementation of Dynamic
Evolution Control of Bidirectional DC-DC Converter for
Interfacing Ultracapacitor Energy Storage to Fuel-Cell System,"
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 57, pp. 34683473, 2010.
M. S. Khan, "Supervisory Hybrid Control of a Wind Energy
Conversion and Battery Storage System," Ph.D. dissertation,
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, 2008.
A. Hajizadeh, "Control of hybrid wind/energy storage power
generation systems during voltage disturbance," in 2011 2nd Power
Electronics, Drive Systems and Technologies Conference
(PEDSTC),, 2011, pp. 20-26.
M. Khazraei and M. Ferdowsi, "Modified projected cross point
control a small signal analysis " in IEEE Energy Conversion
Congress and Exposition, 2009. ECCE 2009., 2009, pp. 3399-3403.
M. Hallworth and S. A. Shirsavar, "Microcontroller-Based Peak
Current Mode Control Using Digital Slope Compensation," IEEE
Transactions on Power Electronics,, vol. 27, pp. 3340-3351, 2012.
F. E. U. Reis, et al., "LQR control with integral action applied to a
high gain step-up DC-DC converter," in 2011 Brazilian Power
Electronics Conference (COBEP),, 2011, pp. 256-261.
M. R. D. Al-Mothafar, et al., "LQR-based control of parallelconnected boost dc-dc converters: A comparison with classical
current-mode control," Int. J. Computer Applications in
Technology, In Press.
S. Lisheng and M. L. Crow, "Comparison of ultracapacitor electric
circuit models," in Power and Energy Society General Meeting Conversion and Delivery of Electrical Energy in the 21st Century,
2008 IEEE, 2008, pp. 1-6.
O. C. Onar, et al., "Dynamic modeling, design and simulation of a
wind/fuel cell/ultra-capacitor-based hybrid power generation
system," Journal of Power Sources, vol. 161, pp. 707-722, 2006.
Z. Junhong, et al., "High-Power Density Design of a Soft-Switching
High-Power Bidirectional dc-dc Converter," IEEE Transactions on
Power Electronics, vol. 22, pp. 1145-1153, 2007.
Z. Junhong, et al., "Bidirectional DC-DC converter modeling and
unified controller with digital implementation," in Twenty-Third
Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and
Exposition, 2008. APEC 2008,, 2008, pp. 1747-1753.

[24]

[25]

[26]
[27]
[28]

[29]
[30]
[31]
[32]

A. S. Samosir and A. Yatim, "Dynamic evolution control of

bidirectional DC-DC converter for interfacing ultracapacitor energy
storage to Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle system," in Australasian
Universities Power Engineering Conference, 2008. AUPEC '08,,
2008, pp. 1-6.
S. D. G. Jayasinghe, et al., "A new method of interfacing
battery/supercapacitor energy storage systems for distributed energy
sources," in 2010 Conference Proceedings IPEC, 2010, pp. 12111216.
N. Mohan and T. M. Undeland, Power electronics: converters,
applications, and design: Wiley-India, 2007.
R. B. Ridley, "A new, continuous-time model for current-mode
control [power convertors]," IEEE Transactions on Power
Electronics, vol. 6, pp. 271-280, 1991.
M. R. D. Al-Mothafar and K. A. Hammad, "Small-signal modelling
of peak current-mode controlled buck-derived circuits," IEE
Proceedings - Electric Power Applications, vol. 146, pp. 607-619,
1999.
M. R. D. Al-Mothafar, "Small- and large-signal modelling of a
modular boost-derived DC-DC converter for high-output voltage
applications," Int. J. Model. Simul., vol. 26, pp. 52-60, 2006.
D. M. Mitchell, Dc-Dc Switching Regulator Analysis: Mcgraw-Hill
(Tx) 1998.
B. Anderson and J. B. Moore, Optimal control: linear quadratic
methods: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1990.
J. M. Dores Costa, "Design of linear quadratic regulators for quasiresonant DC-DC converters," in PESC. 2001 IEEE 32nd Annual
Power Electronics Specialists Conference, 2001., 2001, pp. 422426 vol. 1.

678

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)