Bidyadhar Subudhi

A Comparative Study on Maximum Power Point Tracking Techniques for Photovoltaic Power Systems

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques applied to photovoltaic (PV) power system available until January, 2012. A good number of publications report on different MPPT techniques for a PV system together with implementation. But, confusion lies while selecting a MPPT as every technique has its own merits and demerits. Hence, a proper review of these techniques is essential. Unfortunately, very few attempts have been made in this regard, excepting two latest reviews on MPPT [Salas, 2006], [Esram and Chapman, 2007]. Since, MPPT is an essential part of a PV system, extensive research has been revealed in recent years in this field and many new techniques have been reported to the list since then. In this paper, a detailed description and then classification of the MPPT techniques have made based on features, such as number of control variables involved, types of control strategies employed, types of circuitry used suitably for PV system and practical/commercial applications. This paper is intended to serve as a convenient reference for future MPPT users in PV systems.

A differential evolution based neural network approach to nonlinear system identification

This paper addresses the effectiveness of soft computing approaches such as evolutionary computation (EC) and neural network (NN) to system identification of nonlinear systems. In this work, two evolutionary computing approaches namely differential evolution (DE) and opposition based differential evolution (ODE) combined with Levenberg Marquardt algorithm have been considered for training the feed-forward neural network applied for nonlinear system identification. Results obtained envisage that the proposed combined opposition based differential evolution neural network (ODE-NN) approach to identification of nonlinear system exhibits better model identification accuracy compared to differential evolution neural network (DE-NN) approach. The above method is finally tested on a one degree of freedom (1DOF) highly nonlinear twin rotor multi-input-multi-output system (TRMS) to verify the identification performance.

A New MPPT Design Using Grey Wolf Optimization Technique for Photovoltaic System Under Partial Shading Conditions

This paper presents a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) design for a photovoltaic (PV) system using a grey wolf optimization (GWO) technique. The GWO is a new optimization method which overcomes the limitations such as lower tracking efficiency, steady-state oscillations, and transients as encountered in perturb and observe (P&O) and improved PSO (IPSO) techniques. The problem of tracking the global peak (GP) of a PV array under partial shading conditions (PSCs) is attempted employing the GWO-based MPPT technique. The proposed scheme is studied for a PV array under PSCs which exhibits multiple peaks and its tracking performance is compared with that of two MPPT algorithms, namely P&O-MPPT and IPSO-MPPT. The proposed GWO-MPPT algorithm is implemented on a PV system using MATLAB/SIMULINK. Furthermore, an experimental setup is developed to verify the efficacy of the proposed system. From the obtained simulation and experimental results, it is observed that the proposed MPPT algorithm outperforms both P&O and IPSO MPPTs.

Soft computing methods applied to the control of a flexible robot manipulator

The paper describes use of soft computing methods (fuzzy logic and neural network techniques) in the development of a hybrid fuzzy neural control (HFNC) scheme for a multi-link flexible manipulator. A manipulator with multiple flexible links is a multivariable system of considerable complexity due to the inter-link coupling effects that are present in both rigid and flexible motions. Modelling and controlling the dynamics of such manipulators is therefore difficult. The proposed HFNC scheme generates control actions combining contributions form both a fuzzy controller and a neural controller. The primary loop of the proposed HFNC contains a fuzzy controller and a neural network controller in the secondary loop to compensate for the coupling effects due to the rigid and flexible motion along with the inter-link coupling. It has been ascertained from the present investigation that the proposed soft-computing-based controller works effectively in the tracking control of such a multi-link flexible manipulator. The results are extendable to other multivariable systems of similar complexity.

Differential Evolution and Levenberg Marquardt Trained Neural Network Scheme for Nonlinear System Identification

This paper proposes a new nonlinear system identification scheme using differential evolution (DE), neural network and Levenberg Marquardt algorithm (LM). Here, DE and LM in a combined framework are used to train a neural network for achieving better convergence of neural network weight optimization. A number of examples including a practical case-study have been considered for implementation of different system identification methods namely, only NN, DE+NN and DE+LM+NN. After, a series of simulation studies of these methods on the different nonlinear systems it has been confirmed that the proposed DE and LM trained NN approach to nonlinear system identification has yielded better identification results in terms of time of convergence and less identification error.

Ensemble-Kalman-Filter-Based Power System Harmonic Estimation

The growing use of power-electronics-based components and nonlinear loads is increasing the presence of harmonics in power system signals. In this scenario, proper estimation of such harmonics is intended to maintain power quality and improved operation of the system. It is also desirable that the estimation technique should be computationally efficient while being accurate. From this viewpoint, this paper proposes a nonlinear state estimation technique based on ensemble Kalman filtering for estimation of harmonics, interharmonics, and subharmonics, all using a single framework and at a time, from distorted power system signal. The proposed technique is computationally efficient compared to conventional Kalman filtering leading to less computational cost and hardware requirement. It is observed from both simulation and experimental studies that the proposed ensemble Kalman filter (KF) approach to estimation of harmonics, interharmonics, and subharmonics in a distorted power system signal exhibits superior estimation performance in terms of tracking time and accuracy as compared to performances of some of the existing techniques such as recursive least square, recursive least mean square, and KF algorithms. The proposed technique is also found to be robust and gives accurate estimates even in the presence of amplitude variations in the measured signal.

Sliding-Mode-Observer-Based Adaptive Slip Ratio Control for Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

This paper presents sliding-mode-observer (SMO)-based adaptive sliding mode control (SMC) and neural network (NN) control for effective tracking of the slip ratio applicable to electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid EVs (HEVs), where electric motors are used to achieve braking in addition to propulsion. The proposed SMO alleviates the difficulty in choosing its gains. To adapt the road condition parameter for better performance, a Lyapunov-based adaptation is integrated with the sliding-mode controller. The resulting adaptive controller performs very well in achieving slip tracking in the face of parameter uncertainties. Furthermore, to cope up with the uncertainties and unknown nonlinearity involved with the vehicle slip dynamics, a nonmodel-based NN controller is developed using the function approximation properties of the multilayer perceptrons.

Real-Time Adaptive Control of a Flexible Manipulator Using Reinforcement Learning

This paper exploits reinforcement learning (RL) for developing real-time adaptive control of tip trajectory and deflection of a two-link flexible manipulator handling variable payloads. This proposed adaptive controller consists of a proportional derivative (PD) tracking loop and an actor-critic-based RL loop that adapts the actor and critic weights in response to payload variations while suppressing the tip deflection and tracking the desired trajectory. The actor-critic-based RL loop uses a recursive least square (RLS)-based temporal difference (TD) learning with eligibility trace and an adaptive memory to estimate the critic weights and a gradient-based estimator for estimating actor weights. Tip trajectory tracking and suppression of tip deflection performances of the proposed RL-based adaptive controller (RLAC) are compared with that of a nonlinear regression-based direct adaptive controller (DAC) and a fuzzy learning-based adaptive controller (FLAC). Simulation and experimental results envisage that the RLAC outperforms both the DAC and FLAC.

Nonlinear system identification using memetic differential evolution trained neural networks

Several gradient-based approaches such as back propagation (BP) and Levenberg Marquardt (LM) methods have been developed for training the neural network (NN) based systems. But, for multimodal cost functions these procedures may lead to local minima, therefore, the evolutionary algorithms (EAs) based procedures are considered as promising alternatives. In this paper we focus on a memetic algorithm based approach for training the multilayer perceptron NN applied to nonlinear system identification. The proposed memetic algorithm is an alternative to gradient search methods, such as back-propagation and back-propagation with momentum which has inherent limitations of many local optima. Here we have proposed the identification of a nonlinear system using memetic differential evolution (DE) algorithm and compared the results with other six algorithms such as Back-propagation (BP), Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Differential Evolution (DE), Genetic Algorithm Back-propagation (GABP), Particle Swarm Optimization combined with Back-propagation (PSOBP). In the proposed system identification scheme, we have exploited DE to be hybridized with the back propagation algorithm, i.e. differential evolution back-propagation (DEBP) where the local search BP algorithm is used as an operator to DE. These algorithms have been tested on a standard benchmark problem for nonlinear system identification to prove their efficacy. First examples shows the comparison of different algorithms which proves that the proposed DEBP is having better identification capability in comparison to other. In example 2 good behavior of the identification method is tested on an one degree of freedom (1DOF) experimental aerodynamic test rig, a twin rotor multi-input-multi-output system (TRMS), finally it is applied to Box and Jenkins Gas furnace benchmark identification problem and its efficacy has been tested through correlation analysis.

Nonlinear Adaptive Model Predictive Controller for a Flexible Manipulator: An Experimental Study

This paper presents a new nonlinear adaptive model predictive controller (NAMPC) for tip position control of a flexible manipulator (FLM) when subjected to handle different payloads. The proposed adaptive control strategy consists of an online FLM dynamics identifier in the form of a nonlinear autoregressive moving average with exogenous input model and a control signal generator based on the above identified dynamics. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm is then verified by comparing its performance with that of a self-tuning controller (STC) and a nonlinear adaptive controller (NAC). The metrics of the controller performance are chosen as tip trajectory tracking accuracy and fast suppression of tip deflection. From the simulation and experimental results, it is observed that the proposed controller exhibits superior performance compared with the STC and NAC.