Search

The nonlinearities and unmodeled dynamics inevitably degrade the quality and reliability of power conversion, and as a result, pose big challenges on higher-performance voltage stabilization of dc–dc buck converters. The stability of such power electronic equipment is further threatened when feeding the nonideal constant power loads (CPLs) because of the induced negative impedance specifications. In response to these challenges, the advanced regulatory and technological mechanisms associated with the converters require to be developed to efficiently implement these interface systems in the microgrid configuration. This article addresses an intelligent proportional-integral based on sliding mode (SM) observer to mitigate the destructive impedance instabilities of nonideal CPLs with time-varying nature in the ultralocal model sense. In particular, in the current article, an auxiliary deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) controller is adaptively developed to decrease the observer estimation error and further ameliorate the dynamic characteristics of dc–dc buck converters. The design of the DDPG is realized in two parts: (i) an actor-network which generates the policy commands, while (ii) a critic-network evaluates the quality of the policy command generated by the actor. The suggested strategy establishes the DDPG-based control to handle for what the iPI-based SM observer is unable to compensate. In this application, the weight coefficients of the actor and critic networks are trained based on the reward feedback of the voltage error, by using the gradient descent scheme. Finally, to investigate the merits and implementation feasibility of the suggested method, some experimental results on a laboratory prototype of the dc–dc buck converter, which feeds a time-varying CPL, are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless power transfer (WPT), in a general scene, is the transmission of electrical energy for various technologies by means of magnetic couple resonance. Its potential applications change from low power electric equipment (like smartphones) to high-power devices over short distances of centimeters to tens of centimeters. In this letter, a pulsewidth-modulation-based adaptive data-driven strategy is newly developed for the output voltage regulation of the series–series (SS) compensated WPT. In an attempt to achieve a fast and adaptive voltage regulation, a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) based on an ultralocal model (ULM) control scheme is applied to the dc–dc buck–boost converter feeding constant power loads installed in the receiver side of the WPT. In the suggested scheme, an intelligent feedback controller based on the ULM is used to stabilize the voltage response of the buck–boost converter while the unknown dynamics of the converter are estimated by a sliding mode observer (SMO). An auxiliary deep DDPG algorithm with Actor-Critic architecture is implemented to employ its adaptive capability to eliminate the SMO estimation error and improve the voltage regulation of the WPT plant. Some experimental outcomes on a laboratory testbed of the WPT plant are presented to assess the merits and real-time implementation of the adaptive data-driven scheme from a systematic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent advances in power plants and energy resources have extended the applications of buck-boost converters in the context of dc microgrids (MGs). However, the implementation of such interface systems in the MG applications is seriously threatened with instability issues imposed by the constant power loads (CPLs). The objective is that without the accurate modeling information of a dc MG system, to develop a new adaptive control methodology for voltage stabilization of the dc–dc converters feeding CPLs with low ripples. To achieve this goal, in this letter, the deep reinforcement learning (DRL) technique with the Actor–Critic architecture is incorporated into an ultralocal model (ULM) control scheme to address the destabilization effect of the CPLs under the reference voltage variations. In the suggested control approach, the feedback controller gains of the ULM controller are considered as the adjustable controller coefficients, which will be adaptively designed by the DRL technique through online learning of its neural networks (NNs). It is proved that the suggested scheme will ensure the rigorous stability of the power electronic system, for simultaneous effects of CPL and reference voltage changes, by adaptively adjusting the ULM controller gains. To appraise the merits and usefulness of the suggested adaptive methodology, some dSPACE MicroLabBox outcomes on a real-time testbed of the dc–dc converter feeding a CPL are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]