HDP based optimal control of a grid independent PV system

This paper presents an adaptive optimal control scheme for a grid independent photovoltaic (PV) system consisting of a PV collector array, a storage battery, and loads (critical and non-critical loads). The optimal control algorithm is based on the model-free heuristic dynamic programming (HDP), an adaptive critic design (ACD) technique which optimizes the control performance based on a utility function. The HDP critic network is used in a PV system simulation study to train a neurocontroller to provide optimal control for varying PV system output energy and load demands. The emphasis of the optimal controller is primarily to supply the critical base load demand at all times. Simulation results are presented to compare the performance of the proposed optimal scheme with the conventional priority control scheme. Results show that HDP based control scheme performs better than a conventional priority control scheme