A Variable Step-Size MPPT Control Method ForPhotovoltaic Water Pumping System

Volume 10 Issue 3 January - March 2017

Research Paper

A Variable Step-Size MPPT Control Method ForPhotovoltaic Water Pumping System

Amine Daoud*

Associate Professor, Department of Electronics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sciences and Technology, Oran, Algeria

Daoud, A. (2017). A Variable Step-Size MPPT Control Method for Photovoltaic Water Pumping System. i-manager’s Journal on Electrical Engineering. 10(3), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.26634/jee.10.3.12410

Abstract

In this paper, an improved variable Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) method for photovoltaic (PV) water pumping system is proposed. This method consists on a modified single-voltage-sensor based MPPT algorithm, which is used to fine tune the duty cycle of a DC/DC converter in order to avoid divergences of the MPP under varying irradiance levels. Furthermore, using this technique, only the output voltage of a power converter needs to be sensed in order to find and track the MPP. To investigate the performance of the proposed MPPT method, a PV system that includes solar array, DC/DC buck converter, DC motor-pump, and MPPT control system is considered and simulated on MATLAB platform. The proposed variable step-size method is compared to perturbation and observation classical method with fixed step-size. The simulation results are given and discussed for validation.