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

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.