Performance of a Synchronous Buck Converter for a Standalone PV System: an Experimental Study

This paper presents a detailed performance evaluation of a synchronous buck converter implemented for a standalone photovoltaic (PV) system. The synchronous buck converter is designed to achieve high efficiency with low output voltage and current ripple. The assessment of the converter setup is carried out in open loop mode at different switching frequencies with varying duty cycles as well as in Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) mode which employs an optimized step size Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm. Corresponding experimental results are presented and discussed in detail. A peak conversion efficiency of 97% is achieved with the converter and output voltage and current ripple are observed to be as low as 0.75% and 1.5% respectively.