Performance Improvement of Perturb and Observe Maximum Power Point Tracking Technique for Solar PV Applications

The renewable energy market has increased significantly over the last decade, and the solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation is becoming important in many countries globally with a particular interest in the field of distributed electric power generation. A regular and accurate examination and evaluation of the photovoltaic system performance and efficiency are very essential in the sense that they provide vital information of the system’s quality evaluation for the users, installers, as well as the manufacturers. The maximum power point of a solar panel varies with the irradiation and temperature and the control algorithms are commonly used for the maximization of the power extraction from PV arrays known as maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithms. Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm is one of the popular techniques frequently used due to its easy implementation and low cost. The MPPT technique is mainly used for obtaining the maximum power from the solar PV module and conversion circuit to the load and improving the power quality of PV power generation for grid connection. Perturb and Observe maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is extensively used in charge controllers for extracting maximum power from photovoltaic (PV) module irrespective of irradiance, temperature and load variation. The standard P&O MPPT technique has drawbacks bordering on fast convergence time to a maximum power point, poor system response to fast-changing irradiance and steady-state oscillation with a fixed step size. This chapter discusses the detailed operation and implementation of an improved P&O algorithm technique to resolve the various challenges of the standard P&O algorithm. This technique segments the operational region of the PV array into four operating sectors based on the sector location from the maximum power point (MPP), step size modifications are implemented. Furthermore, the critical comparison is made between the new P&O method and the standard P&O method. Finally, the hardware implementation of both MPPT algorithms is discussed in order to evaluate their performance and efficiency. The measured results show that the average efficiency of the proposed system is 96.89% which is more than 4% higher than the standard system.