Battery charger/discharger for bipolar microgrids with synchronous bus voltage regulation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24054/rcta.v2i48.4470Keywords:
battery charger/discharger, synchronous bipolar DC microgrid, sliding-mode control, integrated design process, bus capacitanceAbstract
Bipolar DC microgrids offer significant advantages in power distribution and are particularly useful for isolated applications. This paper proposes and designs a battery charger/discharger explicitly adapted for these systems, addressing the challenge of generating the bipolar bus from a single battery, which is a crucial capability for isolated microgrids. The work focuses on the synchronous regulation of both positive and negative DC bus voltages (vp = vn) using a robust sliding-mode control (SMC) strategy. The converter's power stage, in a half-bridge configuration, is designed for this synchronous regulation. The chosen SMC provides global stability and robustness for these nonlinear switching converters. A systematic design procedure is detailed for critical converter parameters, including the inductor, bus capacitances, weighting factor, and hysteresis band, ensuring the desired performance in terms of voltage deviation, settling time, and switching frequency. Circuital simulations performed in PSIM rigorously verify correct operation and robust voltage regulation under diverse operational scenarios, including unbalanced and balanced current consumption and production. The proposed approach was tested in a specific application example, confirming precise bus voltage regulation within specified limits (24 V +/- 2.5%), achieving the desired settling times (0.1 ms within a 1% band), and verifying the proper limitation of the switching frequency (below 100 kHz), thus validating the proposed design and control approach.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Carlos Andrés Ramos Paja, Andrés Julián Saavedra Montes, Sergio Ignacio Serna Garcés
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