Regulation of a LCC-S resonant converter for photovoltaic applications combining ANN and PI controllers

DC-DC converters are key-elements in electric systems involving photovoltaic plants. In this work, a DC-DC resonant converter which transmit electric power from a photovoltaic panel to a storage system is analyzed. In particular, a hybrid control strategy is proposed to regulate this converter and improve its performances. The proposed control strategy is a combination of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) controller (to model a variable inductor inside the converter) and a Proportional-Integrative (PI) controller. The mathematical model of the converter and the ways to design the controllers are presented. The converter has been reproduced in Simulink environment to test the quality of the proposed control strategy. Results show that, the proposed hybrid controller is able to improve the performances of the converter, especially in terms of output voltage achievable, compared with a simple PI control strategy.