Performance of a new MPPT method for Photovoltaic systems under dynamic solar irradiation profiles

The electrical power produced from the photovoltaic panel depends mainly on weather conditions. Hence, the implementation of Maximum Power Point Tracking is mandatory to extract as much power as possible from the photovoltaic panel. In this paper, we propose a new MPPT technique to achieve a better tradeoff between the dynamic response and the oscillations. The new method is more practical under very fast variations of solar irradiation, compared to the traditional ones. The proposed MPPT technique is a combination of an algorithm that generates an initial value of the duty cycle which correspond to the MPP for any irradiation level and another existing MPPT method which generates the step size and compute the duty cycle. This combination guarantee an accurate tracking direction, fast convergence and negligible oscillations around the MPP. For comparison purposes, the proposed method, Fuzzy logic controller and Perturb and Observe have been simulated in Matlab/Simulink using a sinusoidal and ramp profiles of irradiation. The simulation reveals that the new MPPT method performs well under these dynamic profiles. In other words, the MPP was tracked with high accuracy and the efficiency was improved up to 99%.