Event-Based PI Plus Feedforward Control Strategies for a Distributed Solar Collector Field

• Published in: IEEE transactions on control systems technology Vol. 22; no. 4; pp. 1615 - 1622
• Main Authors: Beschi, Manuel, Dormido, Sebastian, Sanchez, Jose, Visioli, Antonio, Yebra, Luis Jose
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-07-2014; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Actuators; Control systems; Describing functions; Event-based control; Feedforward control; Feedforward neural networks; Gold; Limit-cycles; Mathematical models; Proportional integral; proportional-integral (PI) control; Sensors; Solar collectors; solar power plant; Solar radiation; Strategy; Tuning; solar power plant; tuning; feedforward control; Event-based control; proportional-integral (PI) control
• ISSN: 1063-6536; 1558-0865
• DOI: 10.1109/TCST.2013.2279216

This brief deals with the application of an event-based proportional-integral (PI) plus feedforward control strategy to a distributed solar collector field. In particular, a symmetric send-on-delta strategy is considered and an event-based feedforward action to compensate for the disturbance represented by changes in the solar radiation is added to the PI control law. Furthermore, we propose a simple strategy, based on the describing function technique, to estimate the model parameters for tuning the controller. The obtained experimental results show that the proposed control strategy permits to obtain a very significant reduction of the events with only a slight decrement of the control performance.