Direct switching maximum power point tracking technique for PV applications

Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control technique is a necessity in any photovoltaic (PV) system because of the low energy efficiency of the PV panels. This maximizes the harnessed energy from the PV source at various atmospheric conditions. Further, it guarantees to extract the maximum available power during the variable profile of the atmosphere. This paper focuses on MPPT and proposes a new technique, which is inspired from the model predictive control (MPC) principle. In the conventional MPC method, the switching state is obtained based on the error between the predicted control parameter and its reference value coming from an outer loop. The outer loop is normally perturb and observe (P&O) or incremental conductance method (INC). However, in the proposed method, the switching state is obtained directly from the measured values of current and voltage. The proposed methodology is validated using Matlab/Simulink platform and compared with the conventional MPC algorithm at different operating conditions.