ABSTRACT Sustainability and reliability in DC microgrids necessitate integration of renewable energy sources with energy storage along with an efficient control strategy. However, the control complexity due to the conventional multiconverter configuration hinders its practical implementation. This work presents a detailed analysis of the modeling, control and operation of a proposed single‐stage triple‐port interfacing converter (TPIC), which integrates solar photovoltaic (PV) and hybrid energy storage unit (HESU) across a DC‐bus. The HESU consists of a battery and a supercapacitor, which effectively tackle transient power scenarios. The proposed TPIC configuration has three bidirectional ports with four modes of operation such as single‐input dual‐output (SIDO), dual‐input single‐output (DISO), PV to HESU and HESU to DC‐bus. Moreover, a competitive mode selection (CMS) based controller is proposed enabling seamless transition between the operating modes of TPIC. Subsequently, the energy management system ensures efficient sharing of power between PV, HESU and DC‐bus with a drift‐free perturb and observe (P&O) maximum power point tracking for the PV source. The performance of the proposed system and its control with and without supercapacitor are analyzed and validated through simulation and experimental studies, thereby confirming the functional correctness and feasibility of the proposed work for real‐time implementation.
Raju et al. (2026) studied this question.