IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO.

2, APRIL 2000

287

A Fuzzy-Logic-Controlled Single-Stage Converter for PV-Powered Lighting System Applications

Tsai-Fu Wu, Senior Member, IEEE, Chien-Hsuan Chang, and Yu-Kai Chen, Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper presents a fuzzy-logic-controlled single-stage converter (SSC) for photovoltaic (PV)-powered lighting system applications. The SSC is the integration of a bidirectional buckboost charger/discharger and a class-D series resonant parallel loaded inverter. The designed fuzzy logic controller (FLC) can control both the charging and discharging current, and can improve its dynamic and steady-state performance. Furthermore, a maximum power point tracker (MPPT) based on a perturb-and-observe method is also realized to effectively draw power from PV arrays. Both the FLC and the MPPT are implemented on a single-chip microprocessor. Simulated and experimental results obtained from the proposed circuit with an FLC have verified the adaptivity, robustness, and feasibility. Index TermsFuzzy logic controller, photovoltaic, single-stage converter.

I. INTRODUCTION PPLICATIONS with photovoltaic (PV) energy have increased significantly over the past decade, since fossil energy resources have been rapidly depleting, and PV energy is pollution free, abundant, and broadly available [1][5]. The applications are even more attractive in rural or energy-deficient areas. Recently, many single-stage converters (SSCs) for PV-powered lighting system (PPLS) applications have been proposed, and one of the SSCs, an integration of a bidirectional buckboost charger/discharger and a class-D series resonant parallel loaded inverter (SRPLI), has been implemented [5]. In the system, a conventional proportionalintegralderivative (PID) controller and a perturb-and-observe method [6], [7] were adopted to achieve battery charging/discharging and maximum power point tracking (MPPT), respectively. However, because of the nonlinear and time-variant nature of switches and the resonant behavior of inverters, it is difficult to model the dynamics of the SSC. In addition, fluorescent lamps operating at high frequencies, although behaving mostly as pure resistance, present a time delay and hysteresis due to the inertia of gas ionization. These phenomena complicate the modeling of the dynamics of an SRPLI. Since the SSC is the integration of a buckboost converter and an SRPLI,

Manuscript received May 20, 1999; revised September 8, 1999. Abstract published on the Internet December 23, 1999. This work was supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C., under Project NSC 88-2213-E-194-031. This paper was presented at the 1999 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, October 37. T.-F. Wu and C.-H. Chang are with the Power Electronics Applied Research Laboratory (PEARL), Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C. Y.-K. Chen is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Chien Kuo Institute of Technology, Chang-hua, Taiwan, R.O.C. Publisher Item Identifier S 0278-0046(00)02513-2.

an accurate mathematical model of the converter system is even more difficult to obtain. Thus, it is hard to design a PID controller systematically. Furthermore, component values would drift with aging and temperature, and PV voltage and battery voltage might vary over a wide range. These variations may degrade the performance of a PPLS with a PID controller. In considering the aforementioned situations, an SSC associated with other modern control approaches, such as fuzzy control and robust control, is usually used to fulfill the same function and to relieve these shortcomings. Both of these control approaches can achieve robustness of a system with uncertainties, variations, and disturbances. However, an SSC with a single robust controller cannot achieve the desired performance because the dynamic model of the charger (embedded in the SSC) varies widely from that of the discharger (embedded in the SSC, also). To simplify the control algorithm and the design procedure, an SSC associated with a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is adopted for a PPLS application in this paper. Fuzzy control has adaptive characteristics in nature, and can achieve robust response to a system with uncertainty, parameter variation, and load disturbance. It has been broadly used to control an ill-defined, nonlinear, or imprecise system. In the field of power electronics, fuzzy control has been successfully applied to regulate and handle dcdc converters [9], [10], pulsewidth modulated (PWM) source inverters [11] and maximum power point tracking in energy conversion systems [12], [13]. Among these systems, fuzzy control does not require accurate models of them. In this paper, it is applied to deal with the variations of lamp parameters and component values, and disturbance due to input voltages. With this technique, not only can tight charging/discharging current regulation be readily achieved but also fast dynamic responses can be achieved with only one FLC. Additionally, the FLC can be implemented on a single-chip microcontroller (PIC16C74) [14] to achieve the desired performance. A system configuration of the discussed PPLS is addressed in Section II, and the derivation of the proposed SSC is reviewed in Section III. In Section IV, design and simulation of the proposed SSC with a single robust controller is presented for comparison purposes. Analysis and design of the SSC with an FLC is presented in Section V. A design example which is built to confirm the adaptivity, robustness, and feasibility of the proposed system is presented in Section VI, and the paper is concluded in Section VII. II. CONFIGURATION OF THE PPLS A block diagram of the overall single-stage PPLS is depicted in Fig. 1; it consists of PV arrays, a battery bank, fluorescent

02780046/00$10.00 2000 IEEE

288

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 2000

lamps, a switching power supply (SPS), an SSC power stage, and control circuits. The features of each block are described in the following. 1) PV Arrays: The PV module used in this system is the MAGA SX-60 manufactured by SOLAREX, and the electrical characteristics of each module are listed in Table I. The PV arrays are formed with 16 PV modules, which are connected with eight modules in series and two in parallel. Thus, the PV arrays have a peak output power of 960 W, an open-loop output voltage of 136.8 V, a short-circuit current of 7.6 A, and a peak current of 7 A at the peak power point. 2) Battery Bank: In order to draw maximum power from PV arrays, a battery bank is used to store excess energy. Additionally, when the sun is tentatively eclipsed by clouds, the battery bank can supply energy to the fluorescent lamps to stabilize luminous output. 3) Fluorescent Lamps: The load of this system is 16 GE TBX 26W fluorescent lamps. The operating voltage of the lamp is 80 V (rms) and the current is 0.3 A (rms). 4) Switching Power Supply: The SPS is realized with a flyback converter. The main function of the SPS is supplying voltages ( 15 V, 5 V, and 24 V) to the control circuits, sensors, relays, and the microcontroller. 5) Power Stage: The power stage of the PPLS is the SSC proposed in the literature [5], which is an integration of a bidirectional buckboost charger/discharger and a class-D SRPLI. It fulfills the features of charging, discharging, and lamp driving, and it can transfer and process power flow among PV arrays, battery bank, and fluorescent lamps. Derivation of the SSC will be reviewed in the next section. 6) Control Circuits: In the design, the control circuits are implemented on a Microchip PIC16C74 microcontroller [14]. The control circuits consist of an FLC for regulating charging/discharging current and an MPPT for drawing maximum power from PV arrays.

Fig. 1.

Block diagram of the proposed single-stage PPLS.

TABLE I ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF USED PHOTOVOLTAIC MODULE

THE

III. REVIEW OF THE DERIVATION OF THE SSC There were many multistage PPLSs proposed [5], in which one of the converters shown in Fig. 2(a) is adopted as an illustration example. In the circuit, a bidirectional buckboost converter is used as a charger/discharger, and a class-D SRPLI is used to drive fluorescent lamps. To reduce the number of active switches, the synchronous switch technique [8] is adopted. Observing the active switches in the circuit shown in and share a common Fig. 2(a) reveals that switches node of sourcesource and can operate synchronously at the and share another common node first half period, and of draindrain and can operate synchronously at the other and can be replaced with a half one. Thus, switches and the T-type synchronous switch (TSS) denoted as circuit becomes the one shown in Fig. 2(b). Since the voltages and during the off states are the same, imposed on and are no longer needed (can be blocking diodes and are in parallel connection and, shorted). Diodes

therefore, they can be replaced with a single diode The overall circuit can be simplified to the one shown in Fig. 2(c). and can be replaced with an Moreover, switches and the circuit becomes the inverted TSS (I-TSS) called one depicted in Fig. 2(d). Again, since the voltages imposed on and during the off states are the same, blocking diodes and can be removed and and are replaced Thus, the final circuit configuration with a single diode of the SSC becomes the one shown in Fig. 2(e). of In the SSC shown in Fig. 2(e), the drain current will be different from that of because switch conducts the current of at one half switching period, conducts the current of at the other while half one. To ensure zero-voltage switching (ZVS) at switches is turn-on transition, the battery-charging current where denotes the value of limited to being less than at switches turn-on transition. This limitation can prevent and from conducting simultaneously, and can both sustain a ZVS. During charge-mode operation, if charging curthe body diode of cannot conduct rent and ZVS of does not exist. On the before turning on of will conduct before other hand, the body diode is turned on. This will cause a high spike current through and because is a diode with long reverse-recovery time. Indeed, this phenomenon can be avoided by using extra-fast diodes. However, to save components, the charging current should be properly limited.

WU et al.: A FUZZY-LOGIC-CONTROLLED SSC FOR PPLS APPLICATIONS

289

control scheme is usually adopted to improve the system dynamic performance. A block diagram used to illustrate an robust control is depicted in Fig. 3(a), in which the plant is with an uncertainty varying with the operation modes, is the charge, and discharge modes. During charge mode, output current of the buckboost charger, while at discharge becomes the input current of the buckboost dismode, charger. To save components, only one robust controller is designed to govern system dynamics. can A standard procedure to design a robust controller be outlined as follows. with weighting functions 1) Augment the plant and based on the desired performance indexes, such as no steady-state error, low overshoot, and fast response to a step load change. The augmented plant can be conceptually illustrated by Fig. 3(b). Typically, the and are chosen as folweighting functions lows: (1)

and

(2) is used to adjust the tracking error, and and where are the two parameters used to adjust the bandwidth of the closed-loop system. For good tracking perforshould generally exhibit mance, sensitivity function low-gain property over the low-frequency range. Since must behave as a low-pass filter. the dc gain of should be large In choosing enough to deal with the multiplicative plant uncertainty. is reOn the contrary, the high-pass property of quired to achieve enough bandwidth for the closed-loop because Based on transfer function the above reasons and the desired performance, and are selected as

(3) and

(4)
Fig. 2. Illustration of the SSC derived from multistage converters with the synchronous switch scheme.

IV. SSC WITH A ROBUST CONTROLLER In the power electronics systems, PID controllers have been broadly used for their simplicity and low cost. However, it has limited the PID applications to the systems involving high nonlinearity, variation, and uncertainty. For such a system, a robust

for the proposed system. 2) Find a robust controller. Through a minimal realization [16], which is the realization of a model with redundant or unnecessary states eliminated, a first-order robust controller can be obtained as follows: (5)

290

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 2000

Fig. 3. (a) Control block diagram of the proposed SSC with a robust controller. (b) Illustration of an augmented plant with a robust controller.

3) Verify if the system performance is close to the desired one based on the evaluation of a singular value Bode plot. If it is not, go back to step 1) to select another set of weighting functions and go through all of the steps. Fig. 4 shows the step responses of charging and discharging current of a system controlled with the designed robust controller. It can be observed from Fig. 4(a) that, although the charging current response can finally reach the reference value, it presents a significant undershoot. Moreover, the discharging current response, as shown in Fig. 4(b), diverges away from the desired value, causing a stability problem (in fact, we have tested several different controllers, but they come out with similar results.). This is because the dynamic model of the charger (embedded in the SSC) varies widely from that of the discharger (embedded in the SSC, also), and a single robust controller just cannot cover the variation. One solution is to design two robust controllers for charger and discharger, respectively. However, this will lead to a complicated circuit configuration. Therefore, a fuzzy controller which can accommodate systems with wide parameter changes is adopted for the PPLS in this paper. V. SSC WITH A FUZZY LOGIC CONTROLLER As mentioned previously, it is hard to model the dynamics of the SSC, and there are some uncertainties and variations existing in the PPLS. Fuzzy control strategy is adopted, as it does not need an accurate mathematical model of the SSC. Additionally, since it has adaptive characteristics, uncertainties and variations can be readily accommodated. In this paper, a 25-rule FLC is adopted to control the charging/discharging current of the battery. To draw maximum power from the PV arrays, a perturb-and-observe algorithm [6], [7] is adopted. Fig. 5 illustrates a flow chart for programming the regulation and MPPT algorithm. The flow chart consists of two main loops, of which one is the control algorithm of the FLC for regulating charging/discharging current, and the other is the algorithm of MPPT. In the inner loop of the flow chart, the charging/discharging curis measured at the beginning and then, error and rent of charging/discharging current are change of error

Fig. 4. Step responses of (a) charging and (b) discharging currents of the SSC controlled with a robust controller.

determined. From a lookup control table, the change of a PWM can be obtained, on which the microconcontrol signal troller generates a PWM control signal to adjust the duty ratio to the deof the SSC. Following the procedure can regulate which is determined by the MPPT control loop. sired value A. Design of an FLC A functional block diagram of the FLC for regulating charging/discharging current is shown in Fig. 6, in which error and are the inputs to the fuzzy processor (FP), is the control output and denotes the output while rather of the FP. Note that the output variable of FP is because it can behave as a PI-like FLC [15] and can than and reduce the steady-state error. are related by the following equations: (6) and (7)

WU et al.: A FUZZY-LOGIC-CONTROLLED SSC FOR PPLS APPLICATIONS

291

Fig. 5. A flow chart for programming the control algorithm.

or (8) The fuzzy processor consists of three functional blocks: 1) fuzzification; 2) fuzzy rule algorithm; and 3) defuzzification. These functions are described as follows. 1) Fuzzification: The FP requires that each variable used in describing the control rules has to be expressed in terms of fuzzy set notations with linguistic labels. Fig. 7(a) shows the and membership functions of the input variable in which each membership function is output variable assigned with five fuzzy sets, including positive big (PB), positive small (PS), zero (ZE), negative small (NS), and negative big (NB). With these membership functions, manipulation efforts to derive the control output can be reduced significantly, while the steady-state error is kept small enough. As an example, when only the combinations of (ZE, ZE) (ZE, PS), (NS, ZE), and (NS, PS) need to be considered in determining the 2) Fuzzy Rule Algorithm: The fuzzy rule algorithm collects a set of fuzzy control rules in a specific order. These rules are

Fig. 6. Functional block charging/discharging current.

diagram

of

the

FLC

for

regulating

used to control a system to meet the desired performance requirements, and they are established from experts who are experienced in the system under control. For the single-stage PPLS, a

292

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 2000

TABLE II A 25-RULE-BASE TABLE OF THE FLC

elements in the same fuzzy set. The center of gravity which is is defined as follows: the control output

(9)
Fig. 7. (a) Membership functions of response of battery current I :
E;

and

U;

. (b) A typical step

typical step response of battery current is shown in Fig. 7(b), in which the curve is divided into four intervals. In each interval, and being different, because of the input variables various changes of the PWM control signal are required to bring back to the desired value. For example, in the interval bethe input variables and are both tween and reaches the set point but still negative, which means that intends to go away. Therefore, a small negative change of the PWM control signal is required to compensate the variation rate Additionally, when settles close to the set point, the of is greater control signal remains unchanged. In short, when than the desired value, a negative change of the PWM control signal is generated; otherwise, a positive change is made to the control signal. In the realization of the FLC, the linguistic description of the rules is expressed in terms of a knowledge-base system consisting of IF THEN linguistic labels and fuzzy logic inference mechanism, such as R1 R2 IF IF is PB AND is PS AND is ZE THEN is ZE THEN is PB is PS

is a crisp value, is the compatibility (weighting where is a value corresponding to the membership factor), and function of For any input set of each of them partially belongs to two possible fuzzy sets of their membership functions shown in Fig. 7(a). Therefore, there are four possible combinations however, each of these has which contribute to the output different degrees of contribution to the output. The Min operaof these tion [15] is adopted to obtain the output fuzzy set four combinations, and then the Max operation [15] is adopted Finally, through the defuzzification to unite these four corresponding process and using the COA method, a crisp to its fuzzy set can be obtained. By following the same procecan be determined, and they are dure, other crisp values for collected in Table III, namely, a lookup control table. Note that, in considering the resolution and memory space of the microare both chosen in the inprocessor, input variables and terval [12,12] which is divided into 25 entries. Thus, the lookup control table ends up with a dimension of 25 25 entries. B. Design of an MPPT Control For the MPPT control, the perturb-and-observe method [6], [7] is used because of its simple structure and it requires fewer measured parameters. In this system, changing (increasing or decreasing) the charging/discharging current leads to a perturbation in the PV output power. The next changing direction can be determined by comparing the current PV output power with that of the previous perturbation cycle. If the power is increasing, the next change will be made in the same direction. As the MPPT control flow shown in Fig. 5, the terminal and current of PV arrays are first measured, voltage is, therefore, obtained from the product and PV power and For example, if and of it means that this perturbation makes

and so forth. These rules are collected in Table II, namely, a rule-base table. 3) Defuzzification: The last step to complete the fuzzy control algorithm is to calculate the crisp output of the FP with the process of defuzzification. Typically, either the mean of maximum (MOM) or center of area (COA) [15] is used to determine this crisp control output. In this paper, the COA method is adopted. It computes the center of gravity from the final fuzzy space, and yields a result which is highly related to all of the

WU et al.: A FUZZY-LOGIC-CONTROLLED SSC FOR PPLS APPLICATIONS

293

TABLE III A LOOKUP CONTROL TABLE OF THE PROPOSED FLC

VI. SIMULATED AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS A prototype with the proposed SSC, FLC, and MPPT is implemented to verify the theoretical discussion. A. Specifications The specifications are as follows: = 120160 V; 2) PV array voltage = 120 V160 V; 3) battery voltage 4) charging/discharging current0.1 A3 A; 5) target lampsGE TBX 26 W up to 16 lamps. B. Important Parameters The important parameters are determined as follows: kHz mH mH, and
Fig. 8. Measured waveforms of (a) lamp voltage and current and (b) drain current i and drain-to-source voltage of during charging operation.

nF F

C. Features of the Microcontroller In the PPLS, a Microchip PIC16C74 is chosen for implementing the FLC and MPPT features based on the feasible considerations of its high calculation capability, small size, and low cost. The microcontroller is suitable for the proposed system due to the following features. 1) An 8-channel high-speed 8-bit A/D converter: The 8-bit A/D converter is suitable for the PPLS applications, providing low-cost analog interface. Four of them are and The unused employed for sensing

PV power increase and voltage decrease. Thus, to track the maximum power point, the next changing direction is to increase load (i.e., increases charging current or decreases discharging current) and decrease voltage. With this control algorithm, the operating point of PV arrays can move toward maximum power points corresponding to different degrees of temperature and insolation.

294

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 2000

Fig. 9. Step responses of (a) charging current and (b) discharging current varying from 0 to 1 A.

Fig. 10. Step responses of charging current varying from 0 to 1 A under the cases of PV voltage, battery voltage and component values varying (a) 20% and (b) 20% simultaneously.

D. Simulated and Experimental Results channels can be reserved for further work, such as sampling the lamp voltage and current for monitoring the lamp power. 2) 33 I/O pins with high current sink/source capability: Six I/O pins are used to directly control the relays. Another eight I/O pins with an 8-bit D/A converter are used to output the PWM control signal. 3) Reduced instruction set code-like (RISC) architecture: There are only thirty-five single word instructions in the PIC16C7X family. Each instruction is executed in a single cycle except the branch instruction which takes two cycles. The high execution capability makes the microcontroller itself be applicable for the overall system control. Additionally, this chip has many special features, such as three 8-bit real-time clocks/counters (RTCCs), interrupt capability, a watchdog timer (WDT), power-saving SLEEP mode, and programmable code protection. These can reduce the need of external components and power consumption, enhancing system reliability. Fig. 8(a) shows the experimental waveforms of the lamp curand lamp voltage The waveforms of voltage rent and current of switch during charging operation starts with a negative are shown in Fig. 8(b), in which current conducts before value (i.e., the body diode of MOSFET These experimental results reveal that ZVS it turns on exists at the switch turn-on transition, reducing switching loss significantly. Simulated step responses of charging and discharging currents are shown in Fig. 9(a) and (b), respectively. Observing the plots reveals that fast and tight regulation and low current overshoot can be achieved. It should be pointed out that, since the SSC is derived from three converters by sharing their active switches, the degree of control freedom of the switches is limited, such as the duty ratio can vary only from 0.4 to 0.6. This limitation will deteriorate in dynamic performance of the system. Fig. 10 shows the step responses of charging current of the system when component values, PV voltage and battery voltage vary 20% or 20% simultaneously. These step responses, similar to those shown in Fig. 9, also demonstrate good

WU et al.: A FUZZY-LOGIC-CONTROLLED SSC FOR PPLS APPLICATIONS

295

Fig. 11. Measured responses of battery current to step changes (a) between 0.1 A and 0.7 A (charging), (b) between 0.1 A and 0.7 A (discharging), (c) between 0.3 A (discharging) and 0.3 A (charging), and (d) from 0.3 A (discharging) to 0.3 A (charging) under the cases of PV voltage, battery voltage and component values varying 20% simultaneously.

(a)

(b) Fig. 12. (a) Measured loci of terminal voltage V ; output current I ; and output power P of PV arrays from startup to the steady state. (b) Loci of output current versus terminal voltage of PV arrays during maximum power point tracking.

overshoot. In addition, Fig. 11(d) shows the experimental waveform of battery current response to step changes from 0.3 A (discharging) to 0.3 A (charging), when component values, PV voltage, and battery voltage vary 20% simultaneously. It can be observed that this experimental waveform is similar to that shown in Fig. 11(c). From these experimental results, adaptive and robust characteristics of the system with an FLC can be confirmed again. output curFig. 12(a) shows the loci of terminal voltage and output power of PV arrays from startup to the rent steady state. It can be observed that this system needs about 70 s to reach the maximum power point, in which fluctuation in PV array output power has been minimized. Due to turning on the fluorescent lamps (totally, four groups) one group by one group, there are four obvious spikes appearing on each waveform. Furthermore, Fig. 12(b) shows the loci of the output current versus terminal voltage of PV arrays, demonstrating that a maximum power point can be sustained with small fluctuation. Note that these experimental results are measured under the condition of solar insolation of 50 mW/cm2. E. Discussion In the proposed FLC, the triangular membership functions, as shown in Fig. 7(a), are selected for the input variables and output variable The peak values of each fuzzy set in the membership functions will influence the overshoot, stability, and steady-state error of system step responses. If the peak values of NS and PS in the membership are moved toward the center point, the function of overshoot and oscillation of the step responses will increase, while the rise time will decrease. This effect is similar to increasing the proportional gain of a PID controller. Additionally, the same as that choosing the membership function of is similar to decreasing the differential gain of a PID of controller and can reduce the overshoot of the step responses.

dynamic performance. From these simulated results, adaptive and robust characteristics of the system with an FLC can be confirmed. The experimental waveforms shown in Fig. 11(a) and (b) are the charging and discharging current responses to step changes between 0.10.7 A. Fig. 11(c) shows the experimental waveform of battery current response to step changes between 0.3 A (discharging) and 0.3 A (charging). Similar to the simulated step responses shown in Fig. 9, all of these waveforms also show that fast dynamic responses can be achieved without significant

296

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 2000

Therefore, adjusting the peak values in the membership funcand can achieve desired dynamic and tions of static performance. VII. CONCLUSION A fuzzy-logic-controlled SSC for PPLS applications has been presented in this paper. The proposed control approach can be applied to the SSC, because it does not require an accurate model of the converter. Moreover, due to the robust and adaptive characteristics of the FLC, charging and discharging current regulation can be achieved even though the system parameters and PV voltages may slowly vary over a wide range. Both the FLC and the MPPT control algorithms are implemented on a single-chip microprocessor; thus, simple control circuits and a low-cost system can be achieved. Simulated and experimental results have verified the feasibility, adaptivity, and robustness of the proposed PPLS. REFERENCES
[1] J. L. Duarte, J. A. A. Wijntjens, and J. Rozenboom, Designing light sources for solar-powered systems, in Proc, 5th European Conf. Power Electronics and Application, vol. 8, 1993, pp. 7882. [2] D. B. Snyman and J. H. R. Enslin, Combined low-cost, high-efficient inverter, peak power tracker and regulator for PV application, in Proc. IEEE PESC89, June 1989, pp. 6774. [3] H. J. Beukes and J. H. R. Enslin, Analysis of a new compound converter as MPPT, battery regulator and bus regulator for satellite power systems, in Proc. IEEE PESC93, June 1993, pp. 846852. [4] U. Hermann and H. G. Langer, Low cost DC to AC converter for photovoltaic power conersion in residential applications, in Proc. IEEE PESC93, June 1993, pp. 588594. [5] T.-F. Wu, C.-H. Chang, Z.-R. Liu, and T.-H. Yu, Single-stage converters for photovoltaic powered lighting systems with MPPT and charging features, in Proc. IEEE APEC98, Feb. 1998, pp. 11491155. [6] F. Harashima, H. Inaba, S. Kondo, and N. Takashima, Micro-processorcontrolled SIT inverter for solar energy system, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. IE-34, pp. 5055, Feb. 1985. [7] K. H. Hussein, I. Muta, T. Hoshino, and M. Osakada, Maximum photovoltaic power tracking: An algorithon for rapidly changing atmospheric conditions, Proc. IEEGen. Trans. Distrib., vol. 142, no. 1, pp. 5964, Jan. 1995. [8] T.-F. Wu and T.-H. Yu, A unified approach to developing single stage power converter, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 13, pp. 211223, Jan. 1998. [9] B.-R. Lin, Analysis of fuzzy control method applied to DC-DC converter control, in Proc. IEEE APEC93, Mar. 1993, pp. 2228. [10] B.-R. Lin and C.-C. Hua, Buck/boost converter control with fuzzy logic approach, in Proc. IEEE IECON93, Nov. 1993, pp. 13421346. [11] P. Maussion, M. Grandpierre, and J. Faucher, On the way to real time fuzzy control of a PWM source inverter with nonlinear loads, in Proc. 5th European Conf. Power Electronics and Application, 1993, pp. 6671. [12] R. M. Hilloowala and A. M. Sharaf, A rule-based fuzzy logic controller for a PWM inverter in photo-voltaic energy conversion scheme, in Conf. Rec. IEEE-IAS Annu. Meeting, Oct. 1992, pp. 762769. [13] C.-Y. Won, D.-H. Kim, S.-C. Kim, W.-S. Kim, and H.-S. Kim, A new maximum power point tracker of photovoltaic arrays using fuzzy controller, in Proc. IEEE PESC94, June 1994, pp. 396403. [14] PIC16C7x8-bit CMOS microcontrollers with A/D converter, Microchip Inc., Chandler, AZ, Microchip Technical Data, D530390B, 1995.

[15] D. Driankov, H. Hellendoorn, and M. Reinfrank, An Introduction to Fuzzy Control. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, 1996. [16] Simulink Users Guide, The MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA, Mar. 1992.

Tsai-Fu Wu (S89M91SM97) received the B.S. degree in electronic engineering from National Chiao-Tung University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, R.O.C., the M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Ohio University, Athens, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1983, 1988, and 1992, respectively. From 1985 to 1986, he was a System Engineer with SAMPO Inc., Taiwan, R.O.C., where he was engaged in developing and designing graphic terminals. He was a Teaching and Research Aassistant in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago, from 1988 to 1992. Since 1993, he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C., where he is currently a Professor and the Director of the Power Electronics Applied Research Laboratory (PEARL). His research interests include developing and modeling of power converters, design of electronic dimming ballasts for fluorescent lamps, metal halide lamps and plasma display panels, and design of solar-arry-supplied inverters for grid connection. Dr. Wu is a senior member of the Chinese Institute of Engineers.

Chien-Hsuan Chang was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1974. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1996. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Power Electronics Applied Research Laboratory (PEARL), Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests include developing power converters and designing photovoltaic-powered systems.

Yu-Kai Chen (S98M99) was born in Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1967. He received the B.S. degree in electronic engineering from Feng Chia University, Tai-Chung, Taiwan, R.O.C., the M.S. degree in information and electronic engineering from National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan, R.O.C., and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1990, 1994, and 1999, respectively. He was a Lecturer in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Wu-Feng Junior College of Technology and Commerce, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C., from 1994 to 1999. Since 1999, he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Chien Kuo Institute of Technology, Chang-hua, Taiwan, R.O.C., where he is currently an Associate Professor. He is also the Associate Director of the Power Electronics Applied Research Laboratory (PEARL), Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests include modeling and control of dc/dc converters, design of inverters, and DSPand microprocessor-based application systems with fuzzy control and robust control.