Guest Editorial: Special Section on Predictive Control in Power Electronics, Electrical Drives and Industrial Applications

Abstract

The features and potential of predictive control techniques in power electronics applications have been demonstrated and widely studied during the last 15 years. The most remarkable advantages are the intuitive control scheme, great flexibility to cover a variety of degrees of freedom, and the straight-forward incorporation of nonlinear variables and constraints. Although this proposal with very attractive characteristics dates back to the 1970s, the experimental validation has only been possible recently, thanks to the development of modern digital controllers due to the relatively high computational burden associated with this method. The great effort of the researchers enabled a large number of publications in journals and dedicated conferences that has positioned this strategy as a viable alternative to the classical controllers. Thus, implementations based on this approach in proposals such as variable-speed drives, current, voltage, and power regulation, renewable energy generation systems, microgrids, energy storage, or electric vehicles (EVs) can be found in the literature. It is expected that the pace of developments with the predictive control keeps the current trend, because of the great opportunities in the research and industrial fields.