Novel and Fast Maximum Power Point Tracking for Photovoltaic Generation

The output power of photovoltaic generation (PVG) varies with solar irradiance and temperature nonlinearly. Therefore, the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is very important to operate PVG to harvest the maximum solar energy in real time. The perturbation and observation (P&O) method is one of the most commonly used MPPT methods. However, P&O MPPT suffers a tradeoff in selecting the perturbation step sizes of the control variables. This paper proposes a parameter-estimation-based MPPT for PVG. Based on the measured voltages and currents and the characteristic output function of PVG, the proposed MPPT uses parameter estimation to calculate the solar irradiance and temperature directly. The operating voltage of maximum power point can then be found out immediately. The proposed MPPT can effectively reduce the maximum power tracking time of conventional MPPT methods and increase the harvested energy during MPPT. Simulation and experimental results comparing the proposed MPPT to a P&O MPPT demonstrate the performance achieved by the proposed MPPT.