Sliding Mode Control for MPPT of a Thermogenerator

This paper reports a practical implementation for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of a thermoelectric generator (TEG) module using sliding mode control. The principal goal is to apply a robust technique of control to ensure maximum power transfer towards the load through a boost converter. On the one hand, the proposed technique improves rapidly the effect of load variation, and on the other hand, it increases the overall performance of the system. The MPPT control is modeled in Simulink/Matlab with the theoretical Models of a TEG module and a boost converter. Simulation results give the sliding mode control performance under different temperature gradients. Hardware based on an Arduino card is implemented, where the experimental results are presented and analyzed. The experimental results are compared with simulation data where a good agreement is observed. Finally, the results show the effectiveness and the robustness of sliding mode control.