A new MPPT technique for optimal and efficient monitoring in case of environmental or load conditions variation

Abstract

Due to the very high initial investment cost of photovoltaic systems and their low conversion efficiency, it is essential to operate PV generators at the point of maximum power (MPP). Within this framework, our first objective in this thesis is to develop and improve the PV system, contributing to optimizing the PV panels' energy through a DC-DC power electronics converter. For this reason, a further improvement of the incremental conductance technique is proposed to improve the MPP tracking capability of the PV system when the level of solar irradiation is suddenly increased or when the load undergoes variations. The new technique includes two processing phases: a calculation phase to improve the tracking speed and a regulation phase to improve MPP tracking efficiency. In order to evaluate its performance, the proposed new method is compared to other methods, namely the Incremental conventional conductance (INC) technique and the Modified Variable Size Incremental conductance (M-INC) technique. The results show that the proposed technique's overall tracking speed is 3.7 times faster than the conventional INC technique and 1.52 times faster than the modified INC technique. Also, the tracking power losses with the proposed technique are lower compared to other techniques. In terms of overall efficiency, the proposed technique is the most efficient with an efficiency of 94.83%, followed by the modified technique with an overall efficiency of 87.94%. In comparison, the conventional INC technique's efficiency is the lowest and does not exceed 83.33%.