Fault-Tolerant Power-Sharing Strategy with A Novel MPPT Method for Parallel PV Converters in Electric Airplanes

This paper proposes a new fault-tolerant strategy for parallel photovoltaic (PV) converters in electrical airplanes. A bidirectional switch (BDS) is introduced to link the inputs of the individual boost converters tied to the solar PV wings of the plane to increase availability. A robust diagnosis approach is developed to monitor the state of each converter. Combined with a novel maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm, a hybrid two-loop output voltage clamping method is adapted for over-voltage protection. With the proposed Interpolate-Index-Zoom (IIZ) MPPT algorithm, the system actively detects the failure and tracks the new maximum power point. The experiment is conducted to verify fault detection and system reconfiguration. The proposed IIZ MPPT algorithm is validated in Simulink.