Study on Power Converters Control in Hardware System Using Low Cost Microcontroller

In this paper, a study on power converters operation is been conducted during Final Year Project (FYP) for undergraduate (UG) students in order to make them familiarize with converter structure, control system and microcontroller response. Two projects have been conducted which are; firstly, real time inverter monitoring system, for small power output and the second is on 5 level multilevel inverter. Both converters voltage output are been controlled using the simple control mechanism which is the Proportional Integral (PI) control for closed loop feedback. The key feature of these projects is the communication between the MATLAB Simulink with the controller design which can be operated in the microcontrollers (Arduino and Raspberry-Pi (RPi)). The results indicate that, by using those microcontrollers, the students are able to establish the communication, easily to be controlled and affordable to buy by the students. At the end of the projects, the students able to integrate all the knowledge which have been learn during UG level such as the power electronics, control theory and microcontroller process subject in order to achieve the objectives of these projects.