Selective Hopping Maximum Power Point Tracking method for PV systems

A variety of methods have been developed to enhance maximum power output of photovoltaic (PV) modules. Such methods are known as maximum power point tracking (MPPT). This paper presents a newly proposed method identified as the selective hopping method (SH). The SH is based on a tracking algorithm of the PV power curve. The proposed SH modifies the perturbation and observation method (P&O) allowing improvement such as convergence time, available power, computational cost and decrease power deflections. The SH and IP&O methods were fully characterized on an embedded DSP systems. The SH shows a convergence time improvement at least 10 times higher than that for IP&O and delivers between 2% and 5% more available power to the system.