Performance analysis of maximum power point tracking techniques in solar pv systems with various load systems

Abstract

Sun is the only alternative renewable energy source to our future energy needs. Incremental advancements in photovoltaic systems make cost-effective supply of electric power for lighting and appliances especially in remote off-grid household applications. To extract the maximum available power from the photovoltaic (PV) module by operating at the efficient voltage, an electronic Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) system is provided in the solar photovoltaic system. This MPPT system comprises of a power electronic DC-DC converter along with maximum power point (MPP) computing system. In MPPT system, the reference optimum voltage of solar photovoltaic module which supports for transfer of maximum available power from photovoltaic source to load is computed by maximum power point computing system. This MPP computing system utilizes tracking algorithm for computation of reference optimum voltage by processing the information of frequently sampled climatical parameters or photovoltaic module operating voltage/current. On the other hand, DC-DC converters in MPP tracking system is used for impedance matching between solar photovoltaic module and the connected load. Impedance matching is achieved by continuously adjusting the duty cycle of the converter to keep the PV system operating voltage at, or close to the reference optimum voltage computed by MPPT algorithm under varying climatic and load conditions. newline