Study and evaluation of load current based MPPT control for PV solar systems

Author

Jiang, Yuncong ; Abu Qahouq, Jaber A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

17-22 Sept. 2011

Firstpage

205

Lastpage

210

Abstract

Because the power from Photovoltaic (PV) solar arrays depends on the array operating and surrounding conditions, it is beneficial to implement a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique to enlarge the amount of output power. There are several MPPT concepts and algorithms presented in the literature. This paper evaluates a load/output current based MPPT (LOC-MPPT) technique using P&O algorithm which requires the load current sensing only as the control variable. The LOC-MPPT technique is experimentally evaluated in this paper with different perturbation step sizes using a PV solar system prototype. The effect of the perturbation step size value on controller speed and accuracy is experimentally analyzed.

Keywords

load regulation; maximum power point trackers; photovoltaic power systems; PV solar systems; control variable; controller speed; load current based MPPT control; maximum power point tracking technique; photovoltaic solar arrays; Photovoltaic cells; Photovoltaic systems; Power systems; Steady-state; Transient analysis;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), 2011 IEEE

Conference_Location

Phoenix, AZ

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0542-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ECCE.2011.6063770

Filename

6063770