A Novel Approach to Evaluating Battery Charger Controller Design with Nonlinear PID Controller in an Extendable CHIL Setup

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cost-effective CHIL setup using MATLAB/Simulink and Python to evaluate a nonlinear PID controller for battery charger converters, aiding initial testing and risk reduction.

Contribution

It presents a novel, simple CHIL method for power electronics converter evaluation, integrating MATLAB/Simulink with Python for efficient controller testing.

Findings

Effective interaction between MATLAB/Simulink and Python demonstrated

Successful charging of a modeled battery pack using the nonlinear PID controller

Cost-effective approach suitable for initial proof of concept

Abstract

The design and development of power electronics converters pose a multitude of challenges. The evaluation of power electronics converters, particularly when operating at high power levels, presents a significant task, offering designers a deeper understanding of the functionality. Several methodologies have been devised to conduct hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests, which are classified into two main categories: controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) and power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) tests. This paper explores the advantages and drawbacks of these two approaches and introduces a straightforward and cost-effective CHIL method for initial proof of concept and risk-free controller training. This method is based on the interaction between MATLAB/Simulink and Python. To assess the operation of the proposed system, a modeled battery pack (96S1P) is charged using a modeled battery charger converter, employing a non-linear PID controller. In this scenario, the controller benefits from the CC-CV technique for charging the battery pack. The results are presented in the final section.