Comparison of backstepping, sliding mode and PID regulators for a voltage inverter

In the present paper, an efficient and performant nonlinear regulator is designed for the control of the pulse width modulation (PWM) voltage inverter that can be used in a standalone photovoltaic microgrid. The main objective of our control is to produce a sinusoidal voltage output signal with amplitude and frequency that are fixed by the reference signal for different loads including linear or nonlinear types. A comparative performance study of controllers based on linear and non-linear techniques such as backstepping, sliding mode, and proportional integral derivative (PID) is developed to ensure the best choice among these three types of controllers. The performance of the system is investigated and compared under various operating conditions by simulations in the MATLAB/Simulink environment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the control methods. Our investigation shows that the backstepping controller can give better performance than the sliding mode and PID controllers. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed backstepping controller are verified experimentally in terms of tracking objectives

Modified T-type topology of three-phase multi-level inverter for photovoltaic systems

In this article, a three-phase multilevel neutral-point-clamped inverter with a modified t-type structure of switches is proposed. A pulse width modulation (PWM) scheme of the proposed inverter is also developed. The proposed topology of the multilevel inverter has the advantage of being simple, on the one hand since it does contain only semiconductors in reduced number (corresponding to the number of required voltage levels), and no other components such as switching or flying capacitors, and on the other hand, the control scheme is much simpler and more suitable for variable frequency and voltage control. The performances of this inverter are analyzed through simulations carried out in the MATLAB/Simulink environment on a three-phase inverter with 9 levels. In all simulations, the proposed topology is connected with R-load or RL-load without any output filter

The effect of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) on PCDD/F emissions from open burning of biomass

This research was performed at the U.S. EPA and supported in part by the U.S. EPA. The visitor student, Maria Munoz, wants to thank the University of Alicante for their economic support to perform this research and the project CTQ 2008-05520 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Prometeo 2009/043/FEDER and ACOM 2011/224 of the Valencian Community of Spain