Experimental Test Bench of Photovoltaic Panel Under Partial Shading Effect Using the SLG-Backstepping Technique

Abstract

Under the partial shading effect, the Power-Voltage curve of a photovoltaic panel includes several maximum power points divided between the local maximums and a global maximum. The most known Maximum Power Point Tracking techniques are unable to distinguish the global maximum power point. Thus, they result in a considerable drop in power. In fact, the Global Maximum Power Point Tracking technique based on the SLG-Backstepping command strategy is able to distinguish and track the global maximum power point. In the previous works, this command strategy has proven its tracking performances (accuracy and rapidity) when it is tested under Matlab/Simulink environment. In this work, this paper focuses on the real-time experimental assessment of the newest SLG-Backstepping command strategy, these tests are carried out in order to prove the ability of this command strategy to provide the desired performances, to detect any change of meteorological conditions and to track the global maximum in the real time. This strategy command is compared to the Maximum Power Point Tracking technique based on the P&O-Backstepping command strategy. In fact, these two controllers are implemented on the Arduino Mega 2560 board. Effectively, according to the experimental results, the SLG-Backstepping command strategy is able to detect the presence of partial shading and to track the global maximum under the partial shading effect. In addition, this strategy command shows tracking performances better than the P&O-Backstepping controller when they are compared under uniform meteorological conditions. In fact, as affirm results, the proposed command strategy tracks the maximum power point in approximately 0.7s, while the MPPT technique based on the P&O-Backstepping make a delay of 1.5s, also, also, under the partial shading effect, a considerable loss of power is noticed when using the MPPT technique.