Maximum Power Point Tracking Controller for Solar Photovoltaic Systems (original) (raw)

The solar or the Photovoltaic (PV) cell is a relatively costly and inefficient renewable source of energy. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) of the PV panel for every type of environmental and climatic conditions is a vital to increasing the efficiency of solar power extraction mechanism. MPPT is implemented as a DC-DC converter, usually a buck converter, used to match the impedance of the load to the panel by varying its duty cycle. This paper presents detailed analysis of the two most wellknown MPPT algorithms, viz., the perturb-andobserve (P&O) and the incremental conductance (INC) , for photovoltaic system (PV). These algorithms are implemented using the ATMEGA328P 8-bit microcontroller in Arduino programming language. Pulse width modulated signals are generated by ATMEGA328P microcontroller. MATLAB and Scilab/Xcos simulation results and the hardware result of the buck converter have been compared. Index Terms — Maximum Power Point Tracking, Perturb and observe, Photovoltaic.