Battery Power Interface to Mitigate Load Transients and Reduce Current Harmonics for Increasing Sustainability in DC Microgrids

Carlos Andrés Ramos-Paja (), Sergio Ignacio Serna-Garcés and Andrés Julián Saavedra-Montes
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Carlos Andrés Ramos-Paja: Facultad de Minas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín 050041, Colombia
Sergio Ignacio Serna-Garcés: Departamento de Electrónica y Telecomunicaciones, Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, Medellín 050013, Colombia
Andrés Julián Saavedra-Montes: Facultad de Minas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín 050041, Colombia

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 17, 1-31

Abstract: In microgrids, battery chargers/dischargers are used to manage power flow between the battery and the DC bus and to regulate the DC bus voltage, ensuring safe operating conditions for sources and loads. These actions contribute to enhancing the sustainability of the microgrid by improving energy efficiency, extending battery life, and ensuring reliable operation. The classical converter adopted to implement the battery chargers/dischargers is the boost converter, which avoids high current harmonic injection into the battery because of its continuous input current. But due to the discontinuous output current, it introduces high current harmonics into the DC bus. This also occurs in Sepic, Zeta, or other DC/DC converters with discontinuous input or output currents. One exception is the Cuk converter, which has both continuous input and output currents. However, in the Cuk converter, the intermediate capacitor voltage is higher than the input and output voltages, thus imposing high stress on the semiconductors and requiring a costly capacitor with high energy storage. Therefore, this paper proposes the design of a battery charger/discharger based on a non-electrolytic capacitor boost converter. This topology provides continuous input and output currents, which reduces harmonic component injection, extends battery life, and increases operation efficiency. Moreover, it requires a lower intermediate capacitor voltage, thereby enhancing reliability. The design of this battery charger/discharger requires an adaptive sliding-mode controller to ensure global stability and accurate bus voltage regulation. A formal stability analysis and design equations are provided. The proposed solution is validated through detailed simulations, while the adaptive sliding-mode controller is specifically tested using a detailed software-in-the-loop approach.

Keywords: charger/discharger; sustainable DC microgrids; adaptive sliding-mode controller; fixed switching frequency; integrated power/control stages design; software-in-the-loop (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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