2017 IEEE International Conference on Technological Advancements in Power and Energy (TAP Energy )
Energy Management in Islanded DC Microgrid
Using Fuzzy Controller to Improve Battery
performance
Athira G R
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Amrita School of Engineering,
Amrita VishwaVidyapeetham, Amritapuri , India
athiragopan92@gmail.com
Abstract- Large integration of Distributed Energy Resources
(DERs) has led to the concept of microgrid. Microgrid allows
integration of renewable energy sources, storage devices, loads
etc. Islanded mode is where the microgrid is disconnected from
the utility grid. Energy balance is the main issue in islanded
mode because of intermittency in DERs. Storage devices are
used because of fluctuation in renewable sources. Since battery
has to undergo high number of charge and discharge cycles
under fast varying load, ultracapacitor is used to reduce the
weight on battery. The main aim of this work is to develop and
implement prototype model of the energy management system
of DC microgrid in islanded mode consisting of battery with
ultracapacitor forming Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS)
to extend the life of battery. The micro grid is implemented with
dc-dc converters, with closed loop control. The control is
achieved with fuzzy logic scheme implemented in
microcontroller. The switching action of the converter is based
on the power balancing to meet the load demand.
Index Terms- energy management; dc micro-grid; hybrid
energy storage system; fuzzy logic controller; renewable energy.
I. INTRODUCTION
Increase in population and the advancements in the
industrial sectors, calls for the need of a higher generation of
power. Usage of renewable source as an alternative can
address these issues [1]. This provides the way for distributed
generation (DG). Large integration of distributed generators
can change traditional structure of grid [2]. Microgrid concept
is introduced as a remedy to this problem.
A micro-grid refers to low voltage power grid, consisting of
various loads and DG’s. Micro-grids can be operated under
two modes namely grid connected mode and islanded mode.
In grid connected mode, the DC grid is connected to the utility
grid, so the power can be exchanged with the utility grid,
where as in islanded mode the micro-grid is not connected to
the utility grid and hence no power is exchanged with the
utility grid. Problem in power transfer can affect the power
balance and hence efficient energy management schemes are
required [3]. Using storage devices such as battery and
ultracapacitor can improve the power transfer and helps in the
smoothening of power flow [4].
Battery is a popular storage device used in the energy
management systems for renewable energy sources. It plays
an important role for power balance and grid stability in
978-1-5386-4021-0/17/$31.00 ©2017IEEE
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Ravikumar Pandi V
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Amrita School of Engineering,
Amrita VishwaVidyapeetham, Amritapuri , India
ravikumarpandiv@am.amrita.edu
islanded mode. Due to low power density of battery, rate of
discharge and charge value will be low, which can lead to
increased number of cycles of charge and discharge. This will
cause high stress on battery [5]-[9]. Ultracapacitors have high
power density and thus allows them to charge and discharge
much faster than batteries, which make them suitable for
transient loads. The storage devices can transfer the power
required for meeting the load and smoothen the power flow.
During transient peaks the ultracapacitor will provide the
power and thus reducing the power requirement of battery,
which can lead to prevention of voltage drop [10]-[12].
Fuzzy logic is nearly equal to human logic and it is better
than PID controller. In non-linear systems, fuzzy control is
more adaptive than conventional PID controllers and it is very
flexible and has less settling time [13]-[20].
This work proposes a control strategy for the dc-dc
converter switching based on the load demand in an islanded
dc microgrid which can balance the power and will maintain
the dc bus voltage constant. A simple rheostatic dc load is
considered. Ultracapacitor along with battery as a storage
device is considered to improve battery performance. Relay
is used to control the pulsing of the converters.
The remaining part of the paper is arranged as follows:
Section II gives the system description and its control
strategy. Energy management method is mentioned in section
III. Section IV mentions about the control of converters of PV
panel and HESS. Section V shows the simulation analysis.
Section VI discusses experimental analysis and conclusion is
included in section VII.
II. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION AND CONVERTER SWITCHING
CONTROL STRATEGY
A. System Description
A renewable energy based DC micro-grid in islanded
mode is shown in Fig.1 which has the following components,
• A 50V DC bus of the micro-grid.
• Photovoltaic (PV) panel.
• Hybrid energy storage system consisting of
ultracapacitor and battery which are used to transfer
the load and to make power flow even.
• Rheostatic DC load.
The PV panel which is the main source is connected to the
DC bus through the unidirectional dc-dc boost converter. The
PV panel will work in the maximum power point tracking
mode to track the continuously varying maximum power
point of solar array. Both battery and ultracapacitor which are
used as the backup sources are connected through a
bidirectional buck-boost converter which is capable of
bidirectional power flow. Rheostatic load is used as the dc
load. TLP 250 is used as the driver circuit and is used in low
side and high side configuration.
through centroid computation. The result is directly used as
pulse width, in the PWM of the microcontroller.
The PWM period is set at 50μs, which corresponds to the
time required for timer 2 of PIC16F877A operating at 20MHz
to count upto 250 starting from 0. Any number in range of 0
to 250 can be set as pulse width, but practically it is limited
to 10 to 240. Duty ratio is computed as shown in equation (1).
DR (%) = (pulse width)*100/250 (1)

Fuzzy rules used in this work are given below:

1. If error is N and cie is N then pulse_width is N.
2. If error is N and cie is NZ then pulse_width is N.
3. If error is N and cie is P then pulse_width is Z.
4. If error is NZ and cie is N then pulse_width is N.
5. If error is NZ and cie is NZ then pulse_width is Z.
6. If error is NZ and cie is P then pulse_width is P.
7. If error is P and cie is N then pulse_width is Z.
8. If error is P and cie is NZ then pulse_width is P.
9. If error is P and cie is P then pulse_width is P.
The rules mentioned above are be shown in table I which is
shown for three fuzzy regions.
TABLE I. RULE BASE TABLE OF FUZZY PD CONTROL
Fig.1.Block diagram of DC micro-grid in islanded mode

B.Control Strategy
Fuzzy logic control is used in this paper. A fuzzy set is
defined by a function that maps objects in a domain of
concern to their membership value in the set. Such a function
is termed as membership function. In this paper triangular
membership function is used. The Fuzzy Logic Controller
used has two inputs (error and change in error), which
corresponds to a PD controller in conventional sense. The
output is the pulse width, as a numeric value, to be loaded
from the microcontroller after adjusting the duty cycle to the The range of error is set from -2 to 3 and the range of change
driver circuit which will be given to the gate of the respective in error (cie) is set to -2 to 3. The value of the cell determines
converter. the output fuzzy set. The ranges and parameters are shown in
Initial estimate for the membership functions is derived from the Fig 2.
results of the PD controller, which is tuned further to achieve
satisfying results. Error and change in error is split into three
fuzzy regions. The pulse width is also split into three fuzzy
regions. The number of fuzzy regions is limited to three,
which is a good compromise between computational load and
the accuracy of the results.
The scaled voltage of the DC bus is fed to analog input of
the micro controller. The scaling circuit is designed such that
50V scales to 3V, so that it fits well within 5V limit of ADC.
The scaled voltage is digitized with 8 bit ADC of the
microcontroller. The result is compared with a stored (a)
reference count, corresponding to 3V, to generate the error.
The difference between this error and previous error will give
the error rate. The crisp values for error and error rate is
fuzzified based on the degree of membership in the fuzzy sets.
Inputs can have non zero degree of membership in more
than one fuzzy sets owing to the overlap of the triangular
membership functions. The fuzzified inputs are fed to the
fuzzy inference engine, which maps fuzzy input to fuzzy
output variable based on the truth table shown in Table. I. The
crisp value of pulse width is computed from the fuzzy value
(b)

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(c)
Fig.2 Membership Variables used in Fuzzy Logic Control a) Error b)
Change in error c) PWM pulse width.
III. ENERGY MANAGEMENT METHOD
The energy management is designed to control the power
flow from the source to the load. The main objective of
energy management scheme is to attain power balance. SoC
of the hybrid energy storage system can be determined by
their corresponding terminal voltage at that particular instant.
SoC can be computed as shown in equation (2).
SoC = α Vt (2)
where Vt is the terminal voltage of battery and ultracapacitor.
Fig.3. Flowchart of the energy management
The minimum and maximum SoC level of the respective
voltage values are provided in the energy management system
which are used as the two limits. The flowchart of the energy
management algorithm is shown in Fig.3. In the energy
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management method, initially sense the bus voltage, load
current, output voltage and current of PV, battery and
ultracapacitor. Check the difference in load power and PV
power (Ppv - Pload). If it is positive, check the state of charge
of battery. If it is less than the maximum value of SoC, then
charge the battery, if not then check the SoC of ultracapacitor
is less than the maximum value of SoC, otherwise maintain
the previous state. If the SoC of battery is greater than
minimum value of SoC of battery, then the battery will supply
the load otherwise ultracapacitor will supply the load. Once
the power flow is diverted to backup energy sources, the state
of PV is accessed in every cycle to check if PV power is
restored to a level to meet the current load demand. If it is
recovered the PV panel will supply the load, otherwise the
last state will be maintained.
IV. CONTROL OF PV PANEL AND HESS
A. Control of PV panel
The PV panel is connected to the DC bus through the boost
converter. To extract maximum power from the PV panel, it
works under maximum power point tracking (MPPT) mode.
Perturb and Observe algorithm is used for the MPPT tracking.
B. Control of the HESS
The dc-dc converter of the hybrid energy storage system
consisting of battery and ultracapacitor is controlled by the
relay which will control the pulsing of buck boost converter
based on load demand. Basically it will be in the buck mode
(charging). If the relay coil is energized, normally open
contacts will engage to connect the pulse to boost section of
the converter.
The values of the components of each system are listed in
Table II.
TABLE II. PARAMETERS OF EACH SYSTEM COMPONENTS
Sl no. Parameters Values
1. Inductor of boost converter 0.41mH
2. Capacitor of boost converter 250V, 47μF
3. Inductor of buck-boost converter 2mH
4. Capacitor of buck-boost converter 160V,220μF
5. Relay 12V, 200 Ω
V. SIMULATION ANALYSIS
Basic system validation is done in MATLAB/Simulink
under islanded mode using PV panel, battery and
ultracapacitor and resistive dc load. 50 cells in parallel and 4
cells in series forms the PV array. Battery of 12 V/7Ah,
ultracapacitor of 3V, 500Ah which are six number in series
are used and these are connected through the bidirectional
buck-boost converter. DC link voltage of 50V is maintained.
The Simulink model is shown in Fig.4.
 Constant Irradiance of 1000W/m2 is given to the PV panel
and the PV panel produces 5000W as shown in Fig.5 a) and
5 b). 2Ω resistive load is added at 2.5s and 5s.PV panel is able
to meet the load of 15W and the battery and ultracapacitor
will enter into charging state which is charged by the
remaining power from PV panel are shown in Fig.5c),5d) and
5 e).
VI. EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS
The system parameters are shown in table III. The dc link
bus voltage is maintained at 50V. The backup energy sources
are 12V/7Ah lead acid battery, and 3V/500F ultracapacitor
which are six in number are used. Through the bidirectional dc-
dc converter the ultracapacitor and battery are adhered to the dc
bus comprising of inductor with value 507.1μH for the
ultracapacitor and 172μH inductor value for battery is used.

TABLE III. SYSTEM PARAMETERS

Fig.4.Simulink Model
Sl no. Parameters Values
1. Switching Frequency 20 kHz
2. DC link voltage 50V
3. DC supply rating (0-30) V, (0-2) A
4. Battery Rating 12V,7Ah
5. Ultracapacitor Rating 3V,500F
6. Load Rating 290Ω,1.5A
a)

DC LOAD

b)

BUCK- BOOST BATTERY

BOOST CONVERTER
CONVERTER

c) PIC 16F877A
RELAY ULTRA CAPACITOR

Fig.6. Experimental setup of the system

The test setup consists of a boost converter which is

connected to the GOID 250PMI PVpanel. This hybrid energy
d) storage system consisting of 12V,7Ah lead acid battery and
3V, 500F ultracapacitor which is connected to the dc bus
through bidirectional buck boost converter. 290Ω, 1.5A
rheostat is used as the dc load. The fuzzy based energy
management programming is done on PIC 16F877A.
Switching control of buck boost converters are done by 200Ω,
12V relays. To sense the dc bus voltage, a voltage divider is
e) used with values of 12K and 100K . Current measurement is
done with ACS712 hall effect sensor. The system is tested
Fig.5 Waveforms of Microgrid operation under varying load and constant PV under varying load conditions.The experimental set up if the
power a) Irradiance b) PV power c) Load power d) Battery power system is shown in Fig.5.
e) Ultracapacitor power.

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 In the default condition, the PV panel boost converter
works in discharging mode and the buck boost converter of
battery and ultracapacitor is connected to the relay in buck
operation that is in charging mode. The experiment is done
under the following cases;
Case1: Ppv > Pload, SoC < SoCmax, UC SoC<UC SoCmax
Rheostat is kept in the minimum load position. Under this
condition the PV panel is able to meet the load demand and
so the PV boost converter will discharge to meet the load. The
PWM signal of the boost converter is shown in fig.7. Now the
B0 pin of pic 16F877A will generate zero value and hence the
battery and ultracapacitor will be in the charging mode as
shown in fig.8and fig.9.
Fig. 7. PWM signal of PV panel boost converter.
Fig.8. PWM signal of buck boost converter of Ultracapacitor in charging
mode.
Fig.9.PWM signal of buck boost converter of battery in charging mode.
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Case2:. Ppv < Pload, SoC > SoCmin, UC SoC<UC SoCmax
In this case PV panel is not able to meet the load even
though it is operating in MPPT mode and it disconnects from
the system. Bo pin of pic 16F877A will generate 1 value
which will make the buck boost converter of battery to go into
discharging mode as shown in fig.10. B0 pin of the pic of
ultracapacitor will generate 0 and it will remain in the
charging state till its SoC reaches maximum limit.
Fig.10. PWM signal of buck boost converter of Battery in discharging mode.
Case3: Ppv < Pload, SoC < SoCmax, UC SoC > UC SoCmin
In this case both the PV panel operating in MPPT mode
and battery is not able to meet the load demand.B0 pin of the
pic of ultracapacitor will generate 1 value which will make
the buck boost converter of ultracapacitor in the discharging
mode to meet the load as shown in fig.11. While the B0 pin
of the pic of battery will generate 0 value and it will be in the
charging mode as shown in fig.12.
Fig. 11. PWM signal of buck boost converter of Ultracapacitor in discharging
mode.
Fig.12. PWM signal of buck boost converter of Battery in charging mode.
Case4: Ppv < Pload, SoC < SoCmax, UC SoC<UC SoCmax
In this case PV panel, battery and ultracapacitor is not able
to meet the load. This is considered as the worst case and the
system will be forced to shut down. It will operate back to
normal condition only when the PV panel is recovered.
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