Design of a Sliding-Mode-Controlled SEPIC for PV MPPT Applications

In this paper, the procedure for designing a sliding-mode controller for maximum power point tracking photovoltaic (PV) applications is proposed. It is applied to a single-ended primary inductor converter, thus to a fourth-order topology, but it can be extended to a wide class of converters suitable for PV applications. The reachability and existence conditions give rise to a number of design inequalities that add to the classical steady-state conditions in order to have the desired closed-loop converter's performances. The superiority of the control technique over the classical tracking methods is analytically demonstrated through the procedure proposed in this paper. The analytical results have been validated by means of both simulations and experiments.