An improved and very efficient MPPT controller for PV systems subjected to rapidly varying atmospheric conditions and partial shading

Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is a very important necessity in a system of energy conversion from a renewable energy source. Many research papers have been produced with various schemes over past decades for the MPPT in photovoltaic (PV) system. This research paper inspires its motivation from the fact that the keen study of these existing techniques reveals that there is still quite a need for an absolutely generic and yet very simple MPPT controller which should have all the following traits: total independence from system´s parameters, ability to reach the global maxima in minimal possible steps, the correct sense of tracking direction despite the abrupt atmospheric or parametrical changes, and finally having a very cost-effective and energy efficient hardware with the complexity no more than that of a minimal MPPT algorithm like Perturb and Observe (P&O). The MPPT controller presented in this paper is a successful attempt to fulfil all these requirements. It extends the MPPT techniques found in the recent research papers with some innovations in the control algorithm and a simplistic hardware. The simulation results confirm that the proposed MPPT controller is very fast, very efficient, very simple and low cost as compared to the contemporary ones.