Performance enhancement of solar photovoltaic system using novel Maximum Power Point Tracking

• New offline MPPT method has been developed.
• Both open circuit voltage and short circuit currents were considered.
• Reference panel is used and PIC is used to locate MPPT.
• Experiments were conducted to study the efficiency.
• The maximum efficiency of the system was about 94%.

The electrical power supplied by the photovoltaic (PV) array depends on insolation, temperature and load. On the other hand, the actual power produced by the PV array is not fully transferred to the load. Therefore, it is necessary to extract maximum power from PV array. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) is a power electronic system that extracts maximum power from PV system. MPPT varies the electrical operating point of the PV modules and enables them to deliver maximum available power. In this work, a new MPPT algorithm is designed that uses open circuit voltage and short circuit current, sampled from a reference PV Panel. Using these measurements the maximum power is been tracked from main panel without breaking the power transferred to load. A buck boost converter was used to match impedance between source and load to facilitate maximum power transfer. The proposed algorithm was checked for its performance in local environmental condition.