An improved perturbation and observation based maximum power point tracking method for photovoltaic systems

Abstract

In photovoltaic (PV) system, maximum power tracking (MPPT) is crucial to improve the system performance. Irradiance and temperature are the two important parameters that affect MPPT. The conventional perturbation and observation (P&O) based MPPT algorithm does not accurately track the PV maximum power point. Therefore, this paper presents an improved P&O algorithm (Im-P&O) based on variable perturbation. The idea behind the Im-P&O algorithm is to produce variable step changes in the reference current/voltage for fast tracking of the PV maximum power point. The Im-P&O based MPPT is designed for the 25 SolarTIFSTF-120P6 PV panels, with a capacity of 3 kW peak. A complete PV system is modeled using the MATLAB/Simulink. Simulation results showed that the Im-P&O based MPPT achieved faster and accurate performance compared with the conventional P&O algorithm.