Voltage Control of Grid-Forming Inverter in Islanded Microgrids Using PSO-Optimized Sliding Mode Controller

The integration of renewable energy sources has transformed the modern power landscape, with microgrids serving as a crucial solution for sustainability, reliability, and resilience. This paper introduces an optimized super-twisting sliding-mode controller (STSMC) for three phase microgrids, enhanced using particle swarm optimization (PSO). The PSO-optimized STSMC demonstrated superior performance, achieving a total harmonic distortion (THD) as low as 0.74% under harmonic load conditions, compared to 0.84% with adaptive PID controllers which shows that the STSMC controller outperformed the adaptive PID controller by 12%. Additionally, the proposed controller stabilized voltage within 0.01 seconds with negligible overshoot, outperforming adaptive PID controllers, which required 0.04 seconds and exhibited significant oscillations. This study contributes a novel control strategy that enhances the reliability and efficiency of renewable energy systems, paving the way for future research in advanced control techniques for microgrid applications.