Power Shaping: A New Paradigm for Stabilization of Nonlinear RLC Circuits

It is well known that arbitrary interconnections of passive (possibly nonlinear) resistors, inductors, and capacitors define passive systems, with port variables the external source voltages and currents, and storage function the total stored energy. In this note, we prove that for a class of RLC circuits with convex energy function and weak electromagnetic coupling it is possible to “add a differentiation” to the port terminals preserving passivity—with a new storage function that is directly related to the circuit power. The result is of interest in circuits theory, but also has applications in control as it suggests the paradigm of power shaping stabilization as an alternative to the well-known method of energy shaping. We show in this note that, in contrast with energy shaping designs, power shaping is not restricted to systems without pervasive dissipation and naturally allows to add “derivative” actions in the control. These important features, that stymie the applicability of energy shaping control, make power shaping very practically appealing. To establish our results we exploit the geometric property that voltages and currents in RLC circuits live in orthogonal spaces, i.e., Tellegen’s theorem, and heavily rely on the seminal paper of Brayton and Moser in 1964.