In this study, the authors focused on developing a bidirectional power converter for a stand‐alone photovoltaic power generation system when a lithium‐ion battery is used to regulate the power supply. Also, a small‐scale air‐conditioner was provided as the load for the bidirectional power converter developed to examine the efficiency of the converter. The overall framework of the proposed system comprised a maximum power point tracking controller, bidirectional buck–boost soft‐switching converter, lithium‐ion battery and small‐scale air‐conditioner. By attaching a resonant branch to a general bidirectional buck–boost converter and applying a simple switching signal control, soft switching was achieved, thereby increasing the power conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic power generation system. Some measurement results are made to verify the feasibility of the developed bidirectional dc–dc soft‐switching converter for stand‐alone photovoltaic power generation systems.

A maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller was used to make the photovoltaic (PV) module operate at its maximum power point (MPP) under changing temperature and sunlight irradiance. Under partially shaded conditions, the characteristic power–voltage (P–V) curve of the PV modules will have more than one maximum power point, at least one local maximum power point and a global maximum power point. Conventional MPPT controllers may control the PV module array at the local maximum power point rather than the global maximum power point. MPPT control can be also implemented by using soft computing methods (SCM), which can handle the partial shade problem. However, to improve the robustness and speed of the MPPT controller, a hybrid MPPT controller has been proposed that combines two SCMs, the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Matlab was used in a simulation of a GA-ACO MPPT controller where four SunPower SPR-305NE-WHT-D PV modules with a maximum power of 305.226 W connected in series were used under conditions of partial shade to investigate the performance of the proposed MPPT controller. The results obtained were analyzed and compared with others obtained under perturb and observe (P&O) MPPT and conventional ACO MPPT controllers were observed.

Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) is a key issue in power systems and its goal is to achieve minimum economic costs by allocating the output of generator units when satisfying the load demands and the operating constraints. As the dimension of the variables and the constraints increase, the traditional mathematical method is gradually not suitable for the ELD. This paper proposes an Improved Bird Swarm Algorithm (IBSA) to solve the ELD problem of a power system. By introducing the nonlinear cognitive and social coefficients, the proportion of individual learning and social learning of birds can be dynamically adjusted. In addition, the Levy flight strategy is added to the group between producers and beggars to increase the randomness. The performance of IBSA is verified via two systems consisting of 6 and 15 units, respectively, that take into account generation limitation, ramp rate limit, and prohibited operating zones. From the simulation results, the IBSA has shown excellent performance and robustness, which can be considered as a reliable solution for the ELD.

This study aims to develop a soft‐switching interleaved converter with a high‐voltage conversion ratio using a single auxiliary switch. As a step‐up voltage converter, it performs zero voltage switching and zero current switching operations on main switches by means of the manipulation of the single auxiliary switch. In this manner, both the switching loss and switching stress of main switches can be reduced, giving rise to an improvement in the conversion efficiency. Placed in parallel with a converter available, merely a single resonant branch is employed in the proposed soft‐switching mechanism, a simple and elegant way to reach the goal. This proposal is further applied to a fuel cell system as a high performance DC voltage booster so as to drive a high‐voltage DC load. PSIM simulations are conducted and subsequent experimental validation is presented at the end of this work.