Hybrid renewable energy system based on Petri nets control for a single-phase flying capacitor multilevel DC–AC converter

This paper presents a robust hybrid voltage balancing control method for a flying capacitor multilevel inverter (FCMI) which is studied using Petri nets (PNs) tool. The proposed hybrid capacitor voltage balancing control technique allows us to generate switching states from the measurement of the output current and flying capacitor (FC) voltages; then, we obtain the required output voltage level and the convergence of the measured flying capacitor voltages to their reference values. Classical control methods of the output voltage of FCMIs such as phase-shifted pulse-width modulation (PS-PWM) and level-shifted pulse-width modulation (LS-PWM) require complex optimization computations contrary to our proposed control algorithm which represents an advantage in the simplicity of calculation and implementation. Besides, to generate the DC side of this FCMI, a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm has been used to control a boost converter associated with a photovoltaic array (PV array). Simulation results of the global renewable energy system (RES) are presented to verify the performance of the proposed PNs-based control.