Improvement of Maximum Power Point Tracking based on nonlinear control of boost converter

Abstract

A Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) is commonly applied in photovoltaic system in order to harvest the maximal power. One of the widely used MPPT techniques is so-called Perturb and Observe (P&O). However, P&O MPPT has a shortage on operating point swinging around maximum power point (MPP), where one can never achieve a MPP. In order to reduce the shortage, new nonlinear control is presented. The proposed control is applied for boost converter which is commonly used in photovoltaic system. The controller is designed based on state-space averaging and nonlinear control theory. In the experiment, the proposed controller is implemented in a real circuit that utilizes solar array simulator to displace the photovoltaic module. Experiment result shows that the proposed method can suppress the oscillation of MPPT.