Global Sliding-Mode Control with Fractional-Order Terms for the Robust Optimal Operation of a Hybrid Renewable Microgrid with Battery Energy Storage

The efficiency of hybrid microgrid systems is drastically affected by the number of power electronics converters interfacing with its components. Integrating distributed energy sources with microgrids with the optimal number of converters is crucial to minimizing the switching losses and power conversion stages, thereby improving the efficiency of the systems. This paper considers an efficient and economical configuration for a wind/solar photovoltaic (PV) system integrated with a battery energy storage system (BES). The PV system is connected directly to the DC-link, thus lowering the losses and cost by eliminating the PV boost converter. In the literature, only a few publications have investigated this effective microgrid configuration. In addition, none of the publications have developed a nonlinear control approach for the microgrid configuration. Due to the greater flexibility of fractional calculus in speeding up the system response and improving the robustness, this article proposes a global sliding-mode control method with fractional-order terms (GSMCFO) to enhance the transient, steady-state, and robust operation of the hybrid microgrid. This controller provides the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of both the solar PV and wind power generators, regulates the DC-link voltage, ensures proper power transfer to the grid, and maintains the power balance. In addition, the GSMCFO guarantees the global stability of the hybrid microgrid. Furthermore, considering the simplicity, robustness, few control variables, and fast convergence rate of the differential evolution (DE) optimization method, it is utilized to optimize the performance of the GSMCFO. The proposed hybrid microgrid configuration under the action of the GSMCFO was simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK. Various scenarios were investigated to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme. The simulation results show that the GSMCFO can achieve superior dynamic performances than the proportional–integral (PI) controller with zero overshoot, a shorter settling time, and stronger robustness, thus improving the power balance of the hybrid microgrid.