Application Flatness Technique for Intelligent Control of a New Electric Energy Source

In this paper, an intelligent control strategy based on combination of the “flatness based control technique” and the “perturbation and observation (P&O) MPPT algorithm” is developed and investigated to control a hybrid electric energy source (HEPS). This EHPS is composed of a fuel cell system (FC) and a solar panel (SP), as the main source and a supercapacitor bank (SC), as the auxiliary sources. The main property of this strategy is that the system power flow is managed in different operating modes with the same control algorithm (without algorithm commutation). The power flows between the fuel cell, the SC is controlled by the flatness based control technique while a P&O MPPT technique is developed to control power of the SP. To validate performance of the proposed control of the HEPS, the simulation results are presented.The output components follow perfectly their own references which prove favorite operation of the EHPS to reply the high dynamic load power and to help the FC in overload mode. In this strategy, the power delivered by the FC is limited and its dynamics is controlled. The simulation results confirm the validity of the proposed control strategy in the studied topology. The output voltage stays always constant even when a high step load power is imposed to the system.