A Novel Photovoltaic Module Quick Regulate MPPT Algorithm for Uniform Irradiation and Partial Shading Conditions

Abstract

This study proposed a new photovoltaic module quick regulate (PVM-QR) maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm, which can eliminate the disturbance problem of the hill-climbing (HC) algorithm, especially under low irradiance level and partial shading conditions (PSC). This proposed algorithm has the advantage that it only uses the detection photovoltaic module (PVM) impedance and the open-circuit voltage to simply and quickly calculate the PVM temperature, the irradiance level, and then the key factor parameter u. To achieve the MPPT quickly and accurately, this proposed algorithm is developed for the prediction of the best MPPT duty cycle based on the irradiance level, parameter u, and load. This study verified the proposed MPPT by the measurement results, where the HC algorithm MPPT has 95% efficiency at 0.55 kW/m2 but diverges at 0.2 kW/m2 under uniform irradiation conditions (UIC), and the proposed MPPT algorithm has an improved efficiency (99%) under the same conditions. Moreover, the proposed MPPT algorithm has 99% efficiency under PSC, while the HC algorithm MPPT’s efficiency is 66%. This study implemented a simple-design circuit with the proposed MPPT algorithm for UIC and PSC, where the actual experiment results can also verify that the proposed algorithm performs better than the HC algorithm.