A Novel Curve Scanning Based Maximum Power Point Tracking Algorithm Under Partial Shading Conditions

Photovoltaic systems have become essentially needful among the renewable energy sources. Due to low conversion efficiency of the PV based generation system, one of the most crucial factors in the operation of the system is the extraction of the maximum power from the PV array which is indispensable especially under Partial shading condition. There are several conventional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methods like P&O, INC etc. that work fine under uniform irradiance condition. But under partial shading conditions, the power-voltage curve exhibits multimodal nature with multiple peaks with local maximum power point (LMPPs) and global maximum power point (GMPP), where these methods fail to track the maximum power point. This paper proposes a novel and fast maximum power point tracking algorithm that scans the entire voltage range by shifting the operating point along the P-V curve by controlling the duty of the DC-DC converter interface. This method tracks the GMPP subsequently by changing the duty in steps thus varying the voltage over the entire operating range of the PV -converter interface. The proposed model exhibit improved tracking accuracy and enhanced tracking speed without additional circuit requirements with improved efficiency of 96.49% under PSC and 99.34% under UIC. The performance of the proposed algorithm has also been validated through MATLAB/Simulink simulation results.