Development of an efficient photovoltaic maximum power point tracking controller

A high performance boost converter for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of photovoltaic (PV) systems is presented. The proposed boost converter uses a new active snubber to minimize losses in the switching and improve efficiency of the converter. For tracking the maximum power point of a PV array, a closed loop fuzzy logic based MPPT controller has been developed. The proposed boost converter is designed using the Orcad PSpice software whereas the MPPT controller is modeled in the Matlab Simulink program. The MPPT controller hardware is then implemented in the dSPACE DS1104 platform. The performance of the fuzzy logic based MPPT controller was tested by using the 1.2 kW Agilent E4360A PV array simulator.