Long Term Evaluation of a Pantile-based Maximum Power Point Tracking DC-DC Power Converter for Solar Roof Tiles

This paper presents a pantile-based maximum power point tracking DC-DC Converter for solar roof tiles with one year of real world longterm measurements. By individually tracking the maximum power point and stepping up the output voltage of the pantiles used the total amount of harvested energy is increased by 14.2 % under ideal circumstances for the array of solar tiles. Further, the performance of the individual maximum power point tracking (MPPT) strongly profits from non-ideal circumstances like shadowing or leaves on the solar tiles compared to the cluster tracking. The integrated asynchronous switched-mode DC-DC converter has a peak efficiency of 94.95 %, an input power range of 0.2 W to 22 W and a measured temperature range of −18 °C to 80 °C. The described setup was measured on a test stand on the roof under real world conditions for more than a year in a long term evaluation.