A pi + sliding-mode controller based on the discontinuous conduction mode for an unidirectional buck–boost converter with electric vehicle applications

This paper solves the buck-boost converter operation problem in the discontinuous conduction mode and the feeding a DC bus of a combined battery/solar-powered electric vehicle grid. Since the suns radiation has a very important effect on the performance of photovoltaic solar modules due to its continuous variation, the main task of the system under study is the regulation of the output voltage from an MPPT system located at the output of the panels in order to obtain a DC bus voltage that is fixed to 24 V. This is ensured via a double-loop scheme, where the current inner loop relies on sliding-mode control; meanwhile, the outer voltage loop considers a proportional-integral action. Additionally, the current loop implements an adaptive hysteresis logic in order to operate at a fixed frequency. The closed-loop systems performance is checked via numerical results with respect to step changes in the load, input voltage, and output voltage reference variations.