To address the DC-link voltage control issue in flywheel energy storage systems (FESSs), a DC-link voltage control strategy using a capacitor-energy-based super-twisting sliding mode controller (CE-STSMC), integrated with a disturbance observer, is proposed in this article. First, an exponential term is incorporated into the STSMC algorithm to enhance its convergence rate. Then, the improved STSMC is employed as the voltage-loop controller to mitigate the insufficient anti-disturbance capability of conventional control methods. To improve the system robustness, a nonlinear disturbance observer (NDOB) is developed to estimate the load power. The estimated disturbance is further feedforward-compensated into the improved STSMC controller. Finally, experiments are carried out on a 2.2 kW FESS prototype under DC-link voltage step and sudden load-change conditions, which demonstrates the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control strategy.
Luan et al. (2026) studied this question.