Critical voltage perturbation size for an open-loop perturb-and-observe (P&O) maximum power point tracking (MPPT) grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) system

The critical voltage perturbation size depends on a number of system parameters, which are difficult to determine for a real system. By modeling and simulation of the PV and DC-DC converter modules in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment, the critical voltage perturbation size for an open-loop P&O MPPT grid-connected solar PV system has been determined, and the corresponding optimum percentage overshoot and settling time. In order to obtain the oscillation parameters for a typical grid system, data from a real world 2-MWp grid-connected solar PV system of Volta River Authority (VRA) of Ghana were used for the study.