Design of hybrid optimized PI controller for power conditioning circuit of piezoelectric energy harvester

Abstract Piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) are vital in the present day to encourage advancing technology through producing sustainable energy and dealing with economic and ecological issues associated with batteries. The required stable energy production from the PEH is challenging due to its erratic behaviour with input. As such, a power conditioning circuit with an optimized controller is proposed in this paper. The proportional integral (PI) controller is utilized to control the boost converter of the PEH system. The conventional approach of selecting the controller parameters, such as proportional gain ( K P ) and integral gain ( K i ), fails to produce optimal outcomes and is time-consuming. Metaheuristic optimization techniques such as Aquila Optimization, African Vulture’s Optimization Algorithm (AVOA) and Hybrid Aquila Optimizer-based AVOA (HAOAVOA) are used to optimize the controller parameter. The different stages of the PEH system (rectifier, boost converter without controller, boost converter with un-optimized controller and boost converter with optimized controller) are simulated and analysed using MATLAB-SIMULINK®software. An experimental study is executed to validate the performance of the PEH system with optimized controller. The experimentally obtained response is compared with the simulation results. In which the HAOAVOA optimized PI controller gives the better response. Furthermore, the power conditioning circuit with a hybrid optimized controller produces an output of 12 V for the input of 6 V.