The increasing adoption of energy storage systems has driven the development of inductive power transfer (IPT) chargers operating under static and dynamic current references, while maintaining robust performance in the presence of disturbances such as misalignment. This article presents an experimental and analytical comparison of three classical current controllers—PI, PI with feed-forward loop (PI+FF), and integral (I)—applied to a low-power inductive power transfer charger (BC-IPT). In addition, a simple and practical criterion for controller gain selection is proposed and evaluated under identical operating conditions, using a 164 W experimental platform with unidirectional power transfer. The controllers (PI, PI+FF, and I) are compared in terms of settling time, overshoot, phase margin, gain margin, and disturbance rejection capability. The experimental results show that adjustable settling times between 1 and 12 ms can be achieved for static and dynamic current references. An overshoot below 8% was obtained, along with stable performance under the evaluated variations in input voltage and coupling factor. The settling time can be directly adjusted using the proposed gain-selection criterion. Overall, the results demonstrate that, under the studied operating conditions (including a 164 W platform, unidirectional power flow, and the selected topology), classical controllers provide an appropriate balance among dynamic performance, robustness, and tuning simplicity for current-regulated IPT battery charging applications.
Quiroz-Vazquez et al. (Sun,) studied this question.