AUTOMATIC PEAK POWER TRACKER FOR SOLAR PV MODULES USING dSPACE R SOFTWARE.

Renewable energy sources plays an important role in electricity generation. Various renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, and biomass can be used for generation of electricity and for meeting our daily energy needs. Energy from the sun is the best option for electricity generation as it is available every where and is free to harness. On an average the sunshine hour in India is about 6hrs annually also the sun shine shines in India for about 9 months in a year. Electricity from the sun can be generated through the solar photovoltaic modules (SPV). The SPV comes in various power output to meet the load requirement. Maximization of power from a solar photo voltaic module (SPV) is of special interest as the efficiency of the SPV module is very low. A peak power tracker is used for extracting the maximum power from the SPV module .The present work describes the maximum power point tracker (MPPT) for the SPV module connected to a resistive load. A Personal Computer (PC) is used for control of the MPPT algorithm. The power tracker is developed and tested successfully in the laboratory. The simulation studies are carried out in MATLAB /SIMULINK . Data acquisition, monitoring and control is done by dSPACE software and digital signal processor card on PC. The measured parameters such as panel voltage, current and power are displayed on the monitor of the pc. The MPPT system has been tested on Solar PV Module rated 38Wpeak at 16.6V and 2.2 A and at 25 degree Celsius and 1000W/m of TATA BP Solar INDIA