2012 7th International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 912

20-22 December, 2012, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Fast Maximum Poower Point Tracker for Photovoltaic

Arrays
Anjan Debnath,1,* Suukanta Roy1, M. Nazmul Huda2, M. Ziaur Rahmaan Khan1
1
Deparrtment of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Banglaadesh
2
Staffordshire University, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology, United
U Kingdom
*anjanbuet02@yahoo.com

Abstract A Maximum Power Point Track king algorithm with

only one current sensor is presented. The output current
provided by the photovoltaic (PV) panel is used as the signal
controlling the duty cycle of the PWM converter that regulates
PV panel power output. Very rapid trackingg, acute oscillations
around MPP and low implementation cost makes
m it a very good
candidate for PV system controller. The T validity and
performance is verified by simulation.

Index TermsMPPT, Photovoltaic, Buck converter.

c

I. INTRODUCTION
The primary source of fuel for majority power systems are
fossil fuels such as crude oil, coal or naturral gas. These non-
Fig. 1 The Electricity demand per deccade in Bangladesh has been increased
renewable forms of energy are literally finite. Moreover, consistently while the main fuel source of natural gas, in this territory had the
burning of fossil fuels is harmful for enviroonment. Now, over downward trend after 2000. Source: BP PDB (Bangladesh Power Development
the decades, there has been a lot of inteerest grown up in Board) annual survey report.
alternative sources of energy like solar, wind
w etc. Also the
Now the term MPPT, standiing for maximum power point
distributed power generation located closeer to consumer can
tracking is that technique for converters to deliver the load
provide advantage in efficiency and flexibility and reliability
with the highest extractable power in different weather
where, renewable sources can be the major partp in it.
condition. Especially for PV system
s the extractable energy
In addition, Bangladesh is experiencing a rapid growth of
varies rapidly because of mainlyy three factors. Different levels
economy and hence power consumption. From 1995 to the
of insolation and shading froom cloud dominates the all.
end of 2003, in this period of 8 yrs, total demand increased
Temperature variation in ambbient condition naturally takes
over 6 billion kilowatt-hours which is depicted in Fig. 1.
effect on electron movement rate and amount inside the PV
For the country like Bangladesh whichh has no recorded
cell. Also, variation in inclinattion angle of the PV modules
snow fall history and mostly a plain lannd to receive large
due to wind forces, loose mouunting, thermal expansion etc
amount of annual sunlight can have this distributed model
caused jointly the output pow wer been decreased and under
with PV sources to provide power to her rurral areas. The daily
proper utilization. So MPPT inncorporated converters always
average insolation level was recorded and estimated from the
seek for a desired terminal volttage to reach and maintain for
year of January 2003 to December 20055 with the help of
that time, such that, in nonlinnear P-V curve, the operating
United Nations Environment Program (U UNEP) and Global
point should be on the peakk always. There are various
Environment Facility (GEF) [11]. The reportedr maximum
methods to name, for designing a MPPT algorithm [9]:
kWH/m2-day was 5.46 in May and the minimum kWH/m2-day
1) P&O or Hill climbinng method
was 3.16 in Jan [11]. However, to make rural area
2) Incremental conducttance
electrification by solar power, cost per kilowwatt-hour has to be
3) Fractional open-circuuit voltage
competitive with fossil fuel energy sourcee too to attract the
4) Fractional short-circuit current
investors. The PV cell efficiency level andd cost in associated
5) Fuzzy logic control
converters and battery are the crucial factoors. Today with the
6) Neural network
advent of remarkable technology in produccing solar cell, the
7) Ripple correlation coontrol (RCC)
found efficiency is impressive enough (~122%). But, to utilize
8) Current sweep
that, in various weather conditions, has become a major
9) DC link capacitor drroop control
research area. A non-linear I-V characteristtic of solar cell has
10) Load current / load voltage
v maximization
put a challenge to extract maximum poower available for
11) dP/dV or dP/dI feedbback control
continuously varying insolation and ambbient temperature.
Literature [9] compares thee feature of different MPPT
Also, the cost in converters depends upon itts design simplicity
methods in terms of operating conditions,
c number of sensors,
(sensor nos, CTs, PTs etc) and operation priinciple.
cost and convergence speed. Coonsidering theses features, each
method can be applied for a specific application. Considering
the main features of P&O / hill climbing method, in [9], only a
978-1-4673-1436-7/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE
 913

current measurement requirement is demonstrated to track out

MPP. For a fixed voltage (battery with enough A-h) only
measured PV current was used to calculate output power and
hence, perturbation direction is adjusted in this method.
In this work, a modification of this MPPT algorithm is
presented which has its goal to reach the MPP faster than that
of [9]. For rapidly varying tropical cloudy weather in the
countries like Bangladesh, this fast and simple to construct
MPPT algorithm is value adding for the investors. This MPPT
has its feature to use just one current sensor, so it is simple
and cheap to construct. Also using the proposed technique in
designing MPPT, it can be possible to make the converging
time three times faster. The algorithm can be adopted to
control a DC/DC buck or boost converter which act as the
interface media in between PV and load. So, flexibility in
choosing converter is there. Here, the validity and
performance of the proposed system is presented to power up
a 12 Volt load in the preceding sections.
(4)
Using this, input-output relationship for buck converter
appears as:
V D V (5)
IV. P&O METHOD / HILL CLIMBING MPPT ALGORITHM
In P&O method the converters duty is perturbed for a
change at PV modules output voltage. Then the output power
is measured and compared with its last value. If power is
found as increasing then, the previous direction of duty
cycles variation is maintained or is reversed if else is found.
When, this perturb causes no change in output power, that
duty is maintained for extracting the maximum power. A
simple flow chart shown in Fig. 3 can make it clear further.

II. PV CELL MODEL

Fig. 2 shows a simplified circuit for PV module omitting
the practical resistance in series and parallel paths. The current
source represents the current generated by the PV cell due to
photons received by it and it is constant under constant
temperature and irradiance. The two key parameters most
often used to characterize a PV cell are its short circuit current
(I) and its open circuit voltage (V). These values are generally
provided on the PV cell manufacturers data sheet.

Fig. 2 A simplified PV cell model

III. DC/DC BUCK CONVERTER

A DC/DC converter is used to increase the efficiency of the
system by matching the voltage as required by the load. Fig. 3 Flow chart for perturb & observation method to track the MPP.
Either a boost or buck, or buck-boost configuration can be Simplicity in design is the main feature for this method
adopted. Here a DC/DC buck converter has been used to
regulate the terminal voltage. The basic DC/DC converter is V. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED ALGORITHM
based on the idea that power is conserved while altering the The variations of P-V characteristic are shown in Fig 4.
voltage and current.
P P (1)
P X P (2)
V I X V I (3)
Here,
V Voltage across PV array
I Current output of PV array
V Battery Voltage across load
I Current output from converter
X=Efficiency factor for the converter

Then, for Buck configuration as shown in Fig. 5 we can

Fig. 4 P-V characteristic of a solar module at (a) different irradiation levels,
define the duty of the converter as: (b) different temperatures. (Characteristic shifting only to be noted)
 914

In a particular condition, there is only one point that the VI. PROPOSED FLOW CHART
module can deliver its maximum power. Using a power
converter it is possible to control the solar panel voltage and
track the maximum power point. Fig. 5 shows a simplified
block diagram of a buck converter which has been placed
between a solar panel and load. The load voltage is constant
due to connection of a battery in parallel with the desired load.
The controller should determine the converter duty cycle so
the maximum power is delivered to the load.
L

Is(t) S IL(t) Vo

Vs D C R
ID(t) IC(t) Io(t)

Fig. 5 A simplified buck converter model

PWM duty cycle for DC/DC converter is given in eqn. (6),

whereas it is the ratio of switch on-time ton and the switching
period, T. Mathematically,
D t T (6)
V V D (7)

Now the power delivered to the converter is given as

follows,

P V I V D I (8)
Here V is constant. For this works, duty cycle is
perturbed instead of V .
Flowchart of proposed algorithm is developed on the basis
of Fig. 6. As it can be seen, the duty cycle, Do is initialized
first and by sensing the current, P1 is calculated using eqn.
(8). Now by small incrementing of D will provide P2. By
using P2 & P1, we can calculate the slope and constant c of
straight line (y=m1*x+c). Now larger increment of D will
give P3 and if P3 is less than or equal to P2 then it must lies in
other side of MPP. Once again by small change of D will give
P4. Now, the slope and constant of the straight line(y=m2*x+c) Fig. 7 Complete flow chart of proposed MPPT algorithm
can be figured out. Getting the straight line equations 1 and 2,
the intersecting point A will come out with corresponding D VII. MATLAB SIMULATION AND RESULT
(here, it is Va). By getting the intersecting point, the desired Fig. 8 to 11 show the simulation results of proposed and
MPP can be found very easily which lies very near to A conventional method for different starting voltages and MPPT.
always. Therefore, a minimal decrement / increment of D will Afterwards Table I and Table II will summarize the results.
provide the desired MPP point in quite a few no of iteration.
A
12 Start Voltage = 10.9 V
Y=m
+C

MPP = 16.009 V
X
1*

2*X+

9 no of iteration to
=m
PV output Power, P

calculate apprx. MPP = 8

Power P, Watt
C

m No of Itearation to MPP
6 from apprx MPP= 2
Pin
P3
3
P2 P4
P1
0
Vm Va V3 0 8 16 24
V1 V2 PV output Voltage, V V4 Voltage V, Volt
Fig. 6 Graphical interpretation of the proposed method Fig. 8 Simulation of Proposed algorithm when starting point is 10.9 V (which
is at the left of desired MPP, 16 V)
 915

TABLE II
9 Start Voltage = 10.9 V COMPARISON REGARDING NO OF ITERATION MADE TO REACH AT THE MPP IN
MPP = 16.009 V BETWEEN TWO METHODS AT DIFFERENT ATMOSPHERIC CONDITION
no of iteration to
Proposed Perturb & Observe method
track MPPT = 49
6 method
Power P, Watt

Starting 19.90 19.90

voltage
MPP voltage 17.73 17.73
3 Total number 26.0 42.0
of iterations

0 As seen from the graphs and summary tables, the iteration

0 8 16 24 number required by the proposed algorithm is comparatively
Voltage V, Volt small than the normal perturb (P&O or Hill climbing) method.
So, the convergence time should be smaller and hence, for
Fig. 9 Simulation for conventional Perturb & Observe method when starting
point is 10.9 V (MPP is at 16 V) simple single sensor MPPT design to develop, this proposed
method shall offer an improvement in convergence time. In
application, for rapidly varying environmental condition, the
Start Voltage = 19.9 V proposed algorithm can be able to reach the desired operating
9
MPP = 17.73 V point of MPP more quickly.
no of iteration to
calculate apprx. MPP = 7 VIII. CONCLUSION
Power P, Watt

No of Itearation to MPP
6 from apprx MPP= 19
3
0 REFERENCES
0 8
Voltage V, Volt
Fig. 10 Simulation of Proposed algorithm when starting point is 19.90 V
(which is to the right of desired MPP, 17.73 V)
9 Start Voltage = 19.9 V
MPP = 17.73 V
no of iteration to
6 track MPPT = 42
Power P , Watt
A new MPPT algorithm is presented which reduces the
required time for tracking maximum power point for PV
modules. A single current sensor is used for its sensing. The
proposed solution can be very useful in designing a faster,
cheaper and effective charge controller, MPPT controller and
grid tied inverter for solar system.
16
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Starting 10.90 10.90
voltage
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Total number 10.0 49.0
of iterations