Predictive Control of Power Converters and Electrical Drives

Chapter 2

Classical Control Methods for Power Converters and Drives

The use of power converters has become very popular in the last few decades for a wide range of applications, including drives, energy conversion, traction, and distributed generation. The control of power converters has been extensively studied and new control schemes are presented every year.

Several control schemes have been proposed for the control of power converters and drives. Some of them are shown in Figure 1.6 in the previous chapter. From these, hysteresis control and linear control with pulse width modulation are the most established in the literature [1–3]. However, with the development of faster and more powerful microprocessors, implementation of new and more complex control schemes is possible. Some of these new control schemes for power converters include fuzzy logic, sliding mode control, and predictive control. Fuzzy logic is suitable for applications where the controlled system or some of its parameters are unknown. Sliding mode control presents robustness and takes into account the switching nature of the power converters. Other control schemes found in the literature include neural networks, neuro-fuzzy, and other advanced control techniques.

Predictive control presents several advantages that make it suitable for the control of power converters: the concepts are intuitive and easy to understand; it can be applied to a variety of systems; constraints and nonlinearities can be easily included; ...