• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.97-106
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• 2013

This study designs and tests a photovoltaic system with distributed maximum power point tracking (DMPPT) methodology using a field programmable gate array (FPGA) controller. Each solar panel in the distributed PV system is equipped with a newly designed DC/DC converter and the panel's voltage output is regulated by a FPGA controller using PI control. Power from each solar panel on the system is optimized by another controller where the quadratic maximization MPPT algorithm is used to ensure the panel's output power is always maximized. Experiments are carried out at atmospheric insolation with partial shading conditions using 4 amorphous silicon thin film solar panels of 2 different grades fabricated by Chi-Mei Energy. It is found that distributed MPPT requires only 100ms to find the maximum power point of the system. Compared with the traditional centralized PV (CPV) system, the distributed PV (DPV) system harvests more than 4% of solar energy in atmospheric weather condition, and 22% in average under 19% partial shading of one solar panel in the system. Test results for a 1.84 kW rated system composed by 8 poly-Si PV panels using another DC/DC converter design also confirm that the proposed system can be easily implemented into a larger PV power system. Additionally, the use of NI sbRIO-9642 FPGA-based controller is capable of controlling over 16 sets of PV modules, and a number of controllers can cooperate via the network if needed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2016.10a
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• pp.520-523
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• 2016

This paper describes a DC-DC converter with MPPT control for thermoelectric energy harvesting. The designed circuit converts low voltage harvested from a thermoelectric generator into higher voltage for powering a load. A start-up circuit supplies VDD to a controller, and the controller turns on and off a NMOS switch of a main-boost converter. The converter supplies the boosted voltage to the load through the switch operation. Bulk-driven comparators can do the comparison under low voltage condition and are used for voltage regulation. Also, bulk-driven comparators raise system's efficiency. A peak conversion efficiency of 76% is achieved. The proposed circuit is designed in a 0.35um CMOS technology and its functionality has been verified through simulations. The designed chip occupies $933um{\times}769um$.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.65 no.3
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• pp.151-157
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• 2016

This paper proposes the variable wind generation system based on the direct torque control(DTC)for the interior permanent magnet synchronous generator. The proposed system can achieve the MPPT control without wind speed in addition to the speed and position sensorless control as well as the conventional current control method. The DTC has several advantages such as simply system configuration, ease of the flux weakening control and the sensorless control. The experimental results show the performance of the proposed wind generation system.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.69-79
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• 2011

This paper proposes a new fuzzy speed control method based on Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy method of permanent magnet synchronous generators(PMSM) for variable-speed wind turbine systems. The proposed fuzzy speed controller consists of the control terms that compensate for the nonlinearity of PMSG and the control terms that stabilize the error dynamics. The conditions are derived for the existence of the proposed speed controller, and the gain matrices of the controller are given. The proposed control method can guarantee that the PMSG can effectively track the speed reference which is calculated through the MPPT control and can reduce the fluctuations of the generated power under even fast random wind conditions. To verify the performance of the proposed fuzzy speed controller, the simulation results are demonstrated.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.174-180
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• 2007

In this paper, a simple control method for two-stage utility grid-connected photovoltaic power conditioning systems (PCS) is proposed. This approach enables maximum power point (MPP) tracking control with post-stage inverter current information instead of calculating solar array power, which significantly simplifies the controller and the sensor. Furthermore, there is no feedback loop in the pre-stage converter to control the solar array voltage or current because the MPP tracker drives the converter switch duty cycle. This simple PCS control strategy can reduce the cost and size, and can be utilized with a low cost digital processor. For verification of the proposed control strategy, a 2.5kW two-stage photovoltaic grid-connected PCS hardware which consists of a boost converter cascaded with a single-phase inverter was built and tested.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.48-59
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• 2011

This paper presents a new gain scheduling speed controller of permanent magnet synchronous generators(PMSG) for MW-class direct-driven wind turbine systems. The proposed gain scheduling speed controller performs the speed tracking at more than one operating point, and the first-order torque observer estimates the turbine torque which is needed to precisely control the speed of PMSG. The proposed speed controller verifies that the PMSG can successfully follow the reference speed which is determined via the maximum power point tracking(MPPT) control and pitch control under turbulent wind conditions. The proposed speed control algorithm is simulated using Simulink and its performance is confirmed through comparison with the results by PI control method.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.1072-1079
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• 2014

This paper introduces a coordinated droop control for the stand-alone DC micro-grid, which is composed of photo-voltaic generator, wind power generator, engine generator, and battery storage with SOC (state of charge) management system. The operation of stand-alone DC micro-grid with the coordinated droop control was analyzed with computer simulation. Based on simulation results, a hardware simulator was built and tested to analyze the performance of proposed system. The developed simulation model and hardware simulator can be utilized to design the actual stand-alone DC micro-grid and to analyze its performance. The coordinated droop control can improve the reliability and efficiency of the stand-alone DC micro-grid.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.202-205
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• 2006

In the PV power system, output of the PV array must contain inherent ripples due to the single-phase inverter. So the function of maximum power point tracking to increase the output efficiency of PV system is degraded. Therefore, to overcome this problem, this paper presents a control strategy for the reducing ripples of the PV array output in grid-connected photovoltaic power system. The proposed control system consists of two loops the maximum power point tracking loop using the perturbation and observation method is used to calculate the reference solar array terminal voltage(Vref) for reducing ripples of the PV array output and the PI control loop is used to regulate the solar array output voltage according to the Vref. The performance of proposing control strategy is analyzed by means of the PSCAD/EMTDC simulation. As a result, we may obtain the high performance of the proposed control strategy.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.299-305
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• 2015

Global environmental concerns and the ever increasing need of energy, coupled with steady progress in renewable energy technologies, are opening up new opportunities for utilization of renewable energy resources. Distributed electricity generation is a suitable option for sustainable development thanks to the load management benefits and the opportunity to provide electricity to remote areas. Solar energy being easy to harness, non-polluting and never ending is one of the best renewable energy sources for electricity generation in present and future time. Due to the random and intermittent nature of solar source, PV plants require the adoption of an energy storage and management system to compensate fluctuations and to meet the energy demand during night hours. This paper presents an efficient, economic and technical model for the design of a MPPT based grid connected PV with battery storage and management system. This system satisfies the energy demand through the PV based battery energy storage system. The aim is to present PV-BES system design and management strategy to maximize the system performance and economic profitability. PV-BES (photovoltaic based battery energy storage) system is operated in different modes to verify the system feasibility. In case of excess energy (mode 1), Li-ion batteries are charged using CC-CV mechanism effectively controlled by fuzzy logic based PID control system whereas during the time of insufficient power from PV system (mode 2), batteries are used as backup to compensate the power shortage at load and likewise other modes for different scenarios. This operational mode change in PV-BES system is implemented by State flow chart technique based on SOC, DC bus voltages and solar Irradiance. Performance of the proposed PV-BES system is verified by some simulations study. Simulation results showed that proposed system can overcome the disturbance of external environmental changes, and controls the energy flow in efficient and economical way.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.300-309
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• 2007

In this paper, a grid-interactive photovoltaic (PV) system with the function of the power quality improvement is presented. The proposed system requires only one current-controlled voltage source inverter, which control the current flow at low total harmonic distortion and unity power factor, as well as simultaneously provide reactive power support. The proposed system operation has been divided into two modes (sunny and night). In night mode, the system operates to compensate the reactive power demanded by nonlinear or variation in loads. In sunny mode, the system performs power quality control (PQC) to reduce harmonic current and to improve power factor as well as maximum power point tracking (MPPT) to supply active power from the PV arrays, simultaneously. To verify the proposed system a comprehensive evaluation included simulation and experimental results are presented.