The output voltage of a photovoltaic (PV) system relies on temperature and solar irradiance; therefore, the PV system and a load cannot be connected directly. To control the output voltage, a DC-DC boost converter is required. However, regulating this converter is a very complicated problem due to its non-linear time-variant and non-minimum phase circuit. Furthermore, the problem becomes more challenging due to uncertainty about the output voltage of the PV system and variation in the load, which is a non-linear disturbance. In this study, an observer-based backstepping sliding mode control (OBSMC) is proposed to regulate the output voltage of a DC-DC boost converter. The input voltage of the converter can be a DC energy source such as PV-based microgrid systems. An adaptive scheme and sliding mode controller constructed from a dynamic model of the converter is used to design an observer. This observer estimates unmeasured system states such as inductor current, capacitor voltage, uncertainty output voltages of the PV cell, and variation of loads such that the system does not need any sensors. In addition, the backstepping technique has been combined with the SMC to make the controller more stable and robust. In addition, the Lyapunov direct method is employed to ensure the stability of the proposed method. By employing the proposed configuration, the control performance was improved. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller, a numerical simulation was conducted. The simulation results show that the proposed method is always able to accurately follow the desired voltage with more robustness, fewer steady-state errors, smaller overshoot, faster recovery time, and faster transient response time. In addition, the proposed method consistently produces the least value of integral absolute error.

In the past few decades, the energy shortage and global warming problems became a serious concern for humanity. To solve these problems, many countries have evolved renewable energy sources (RESs) such as solar, wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, and biomass energy sources. Solar energy is usually harvested via a solar panel that is connected to a boost converter to supply the loads. The converter has a key role in the system, since it controls the voltage at the DC bus. If any accidental fault occurs in the converter, the solar panel cannot supply electricity to the loads. Therefore, reliability evaluation of the converter is usually warranted. In this study, reliability evaluation of boost converters connected to a solar panel is carried out using the Markov technique. This technique is widely employed to evaluate the reliability and availability of a system with fixed failure and repair rates. Using the Markov method, we found that the reliability of the typical specific converter considered is 0.9986 for and that its life expectancy or Mean-Time-To-Failure (MTTF) is .

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