Predictive Control of a Buck Converter for Photovoltaic Energy: An Experimental Implementation

Predictive control has emerged as a feasible alternative for the control of power converters for photovoltaic applications. In this work, a predictive control scheme is proposed to control a Buck converter that works attached to a photovoltaic system and to a energy storage system. The predictive control is used to control the current using the reference from the perturb and observe algorithm to assure the photovoltaic system is working on the maximum power point. To prove the proposed control scheme, simulation and experimental results are obtained. The results show clearly that the predictive control scheme applied to the buck converter is able to track the reference current coming from the pertub and observe algorithm in order to make the photovoltaic system work efficiently.