Hardware implementation of improved perturb and observe maximum power point tracking technique for photovoltaic systems with zero oscillations

The maximum power point tracking (MPPT) ensures the highest output power of the photovoltaic (PV) panel. The conventional Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm has advantage of extracting maximum power from the PV panel but it has consistent oscillations around the maximum power point (MPP) which results in a significant loss of power. In this paper an improved P&O MPPT algorithm is proposed. The proposed method uses reference cell connected at the edge of PV panel for measuring change in current under dynamic changes in solar irradiance. Once the proposed P&O MPPT reaches at MPP it stops tracking and monitors change in current in reference cell. If it detects change in current in reference cell only then it starts tracking MPP. Thus the proposed method offers the advantage in terms of zero oscillations around the (MPP) at the steady state and power loss which occurs due to consistent oscillations is saved and output power of proposed method is 0.24 W more as compared to conventional P&O MPPT method. Furthermore, the proposed method minimizes the output voltage ripples up to 77.18%. The proposed method is analyzed and feasibility of the proposed method are verified by the experiment results. The results carried out prove that the proposed algorithm does not deviate at the MPP and avoids the power loss.