Implementation of the novel temperature controller and incremental conductance MPPT algorithm for indoor photovoltaic system

Abstract

A novel methodology to control the temperature of the indoor photovoltaic system is presented. This work introduces an Indoor Photovoltaic System (IPVS) consisting of an Indoor Lighting System (ILS), Temperature Controller (TC) and the Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT). In IPVS, sunlight is brought inside the room using ILS which consists of Fresnel lenses mounted on the solar tracker to properly orient the lenses toward the sun. Infrared and ultraviolet radiations of the solar spectrum are filtered out and only visible part is converged at a specific point, guided indoor through optical fibers. Further, a novel optical temperature controller is introduced that maintains the temperature of the solar panel to the standard test conditions. Temperature controller ensures the optimum temperature of the solar panel. To ensure the cell to operate at its maximum power point, a variable step sized Incremental Conductance maximum power point tracking algorithm is implemented. Degradation of the output power of the solar panel is always because of the variation in temperature and solar irradiance that has been compensated by the temperature controller and the MPPT respectively. The graphs of the output power verify the validity of the proposed IPVS. The results presented here verified that the temperature controller accurately controls the temperature of the solar panel and the MPPT tracks the maximum power point without steady-state oscillations smoothing the output power of the indoor solar photovoltaic panel.