Climatic sensorless maximum power point tracking in PV generation systems

► The problem of MPPT is addressed for photovoltaic (PV) arrays. ► The PV system includes a PV panel, a PWM boost power converter and a storing battery. ► The MPPT is presently sought without resorting to solar radiation and temperature sensors in order to reduce the PV system cost. ► The proposed sensorless control solution is an adaptive nonlinear controller involving online estimation of uncertain parameters i.e. those depending on radiation and temperature. ► The adaptive control problem is not a standard one because parameter uncertainty affects, in addition to system dynamics, the output reference trajectory (expressing the MPPT purpose).