Hybrid energy storage systems (HESSs) are essential for adopting sustainable energy sources. HESSs combine complementary storage technologies, such as batteries and supercapacitors, to optimize efficiency, grid stability, and demand management. This work proposes a semi-active HESS formed by a battery connected to the DC bus and a supercapacitor managed by a Sepic/Zeta converter, which has the aim of avoiding high-frequency variations in the battery current on any operation condition. The converter control structure is formed by an LQG controller, an optimal state observer, and an adaptive strategy to ensure the correct controller operation in any condition: step-up, step-down, and unitary gain. This adaptive LQG controller consists of two control loops, an internal current loop and an external voltage loop, which use only two sensors. Compared with classical PI and LQG controllers, the adaptive LQG solution exhibits a better performance in all operation modes, up to 68% better than the LQG controller and up to 84% better than the PI controller. Therefore, the control strategy proposed for this HESS provides a fast-tracking of DC-bus current, driving the high-frequency component to the supercapacitor and the low-frequency component to the battery. Thus, fast changes in the battery power are avoided, reducing the degradation. Finally, the system adaptability to changes up to 67% in the operation range are experimentally tested, and the implementation of the control system using commercial hardware is verified.

In a DC microgrid that involves a battery storage system, the primary energy management is performed by a battery charger/discharger based on a dc/dc power converter. Moreover, the battery charger/discharger is also used to regulate the voltage of the dc bus. One of the challenges at the control level is to regulate the DC bus voltage under battery charge and discharge conditions but also under different relations between the battery and bus voltages. For this reason, this paper proposes a battery charger/discharger based on the Sepic/Zeta converter and an adaptive controller, which provides bidirectional current flow, stable bus voltage, and satisfactory electrical characteristics. The main advantage of the proposed control system is the capability to adapt the controller parameters to any operation condition, which provides a general solution to interface any battery to any bus voltage. This study is focused on the design procedure of both the power converter and the controller, where a detailed mathematical analysis is performed to ensure the system performance and stability. Finally, the proposed solution is validated using an experimental prototype and a practical application case.

The growing use of DC/DC power converters has resulted in the requirement that their complex controllers be cheaper and smaller, thus using cost-effective implementations. For this purpose, it is necessary to decrease the computational burden in controller implementation to minimize the hardware requirements. This manuscript presents two methods for tuning an adaptive linear–quadratic–Gaussian voltage controller for a battery charger/discharger, implemented with a Sepic/Zeta converter, to work at any operating point. The first method is based on a lookup table to select, using the nearest method, both the state feedback vector and the observer gain vector, solving the Riccati’s differential equation offline for each practical operating point. The second method defines a polynomial function for each controller element that is based on the previous data corresponding to the system operating points. The adaptability of the two controllers to fixed voltage regulation and reference tracking was validated using simulations and experimental tests. The overshoot and settling time results were lower than 11% and 3.7 ms, which are in the same orders of magnitude of a control approach in which the equations are solved online. Likewise, three indices were evaluated: central processing unit capacity, cost, and performance. This evaluation confirms that the controller based on polynomial interpolation is the best option of the two examined methods due to the satisfactory balance between dynamic performance and cost. Despite the advantages of the controllers in being based on a lookup table and polynomial interpolation, the adaptive linear–quadratic–Gaussian has the benefit of not requiring an offline training campaign; however, the cost saving obtained with the lookup table controllers and polynomial interpolation controllers, due to the possible implementation on small-size microcontrollers with development tool simple and easy maintenance, will surely be desirable for a large number of deployed units, ensuring that those solutions are highly cost-effective.

The introduction of renewable energy sources in microgrids increases energy reliability, especially in small communities that operate disconnected from the main power grid. A battery energy storage system (BESS) plays an important role in microgrids because it helps mitigate the problems caused by the variability of renewable energy sources, such as unattended demand and voltage instability. However, a BESS increases the cost of a microgrid due to the initial investment and maintenance, requiring a cost–benefit analysis to determine its size for each application. This paper addresses this problem by formulating a method that combines economic and technical approaches to provide favorable relations between costs and performances. Mixed integer linear programming (MILP) is used as optimization algorithm to size BESS, which is applied to an isolated community in Colombia located at Isla Múcura. The results indicate that the optimal BESS requires a maximum power of 17.6 kW and a capacity of 76.61 kWh, which is significantly smaller than the existing 480 kWh system. Thus, a reduction of 83.33% in the number of batteries is obtained. This optimized size reduces operational costs while maintaining technical reliability. The proposed method aims to solve an important problem concerning state policy and the universalization of electrical services, providing more opportunities to decision makers in minimizing the costs and efforts in the implementation of energy storage systems for isolated microgrids.