Single Sensor Based ESS Controller for DC Bus Stabilization in Low Power Isolated Solar PV System

This paper discusses a low power isolated DC microgrid system, which consists of solar PV as the energy source for feeding DC loads, and battery as the Energy Storage Stack (ESS) for system power management. Since, configured system is meant for low power applications; hence, optimization of the system controller circuitry and the electrical sensors used is an important aspect for consideration. In this paper, a novel single voltage sensor based ESS converter controller is proposed for the DC bus voltage stabilization and system power management. The proposed controller is capable of handling the power exchange with multiple ESSs using a single sensor only, as compared to the conventional controllers where the sensory requirements increases with the number of ESSs being integrated. The reduction in use of sensors leads to a simplified control circuitry and better system stability (due to lesser PI tuners). The proposed controller is less computation intensive that can be easily implemented by the low cost microcontroller. The effectiveness of the proposed ESS converter control algorithm for the isolated DC microgrid systems has been tested and verified on both simulation and experimental platforms.