An advanced integral sliding mode controller design for residual current compensation inverters in compensated power networks to mitigate powerline bushfire hazards

This work deals with designing an advanced integral sliding mode controller (AISMC) for residual current compensation (RCC) inverters connected with arc suppression coils to compensate for power distribution networks where the main idea is to alleviate hazardous circumstances caused by electric faults on powerlines. The key advancement in the proposed AISMC over traditional sliding mode controllers is the utilization of an improved exponential reaching law which ensures the faster convergence of the desired control objective that is the fault current compensation in this particular application. An improved exponential reaching law (IERL) used in this work is a combination of the exponential and constant-proportional reaching laws (while existing approaches use constant reaching laws) which assists to minimize the current injection error through the RCC inverter in the steady-state. The integral action in conjunction with the exponential function in the sliding surface, based on which the proposed controller is designed, helps to eliminate the chattering effects in a quickest way that can be evidenced from the settling time and percentage overshoot. The feasibility of the proposed AISMC is theoretically assessed by analyzing the stability using the Lyapunov stability theory. Simulation and processor-in-loop results further justify the theoretical foundation by confirming the desired current injection and compensating voltage and current due to the fault. Finally, results are compared with a TIMSC for demonstrating the superiority of the AISMC.