Abstract
A study of a DC-DC boost converter fed by a photovoltaic (PV) generator and supplying a constant voltage load is presented. The input port of the converter is controlled using fixed frequency pulse width modulation (PWM) based on the loss-free resistor (LFR) concept whose parameter is selected with the aim to force the PV generator to work at its maximum power point. Under this control strategy, it is shown that the system can exhibit complex nonlinear behaviors for certain ranges of parameter values. First, using the nonlinear models of the converter and the PV source, the dynamics of the system are explored in terms of some of its parameters such as the proportional gain of the controller and the output DC bus voltage. To present a comprehensive approach to the overall system behavior under parameter changes, a series of bifurcation diagrams are computed from the circuit-level switched model and from a simplified model both implemented in PSIM (c) software showing a remarkable agreement. These diagrams show that the first instability that takes place in the system period-1 orbit when a primary parameter is varied is a smooth period-doubling bifurcation and that the nonlinearity of the PV generator is irrelevant for predicting this phenomenon. Different bifurcation scenarios can take place for the resulting period-2 subharmonic regime depending on a secondary bifurcation parameter. The boundary between the desired period-1 orbit and subharmonic oscillation resulting from period-doubling in the parameter space is obtained by calculating the eigenvalues of the monodromy matrix of the simplified model. The results from this model have been validated with time-domain numerical simulation using the circuit-level switched model and also experimentally from a laboratory prototype. This study can help in selecting the parameter values of the circuit in order to delimit the region of period-1 operation of the converter which is of practical interest in PV systems.