Control of stand-alone PV system under non-uniform irradiance

Abstract

Renewable energy sources play vital role in power generation, research in this area has grown rapidly in the last few years and the society is now aware of the harmful effects of fossil fuel on the environment and with the increased cost of fuel production. It is very important to look for alternative efficient, clean and cheap energy sources. Solar energy is usually considered as one of the most promising renewable energy sources. The power generation from the photovoltaic panels is subjected to varying environmental conditions such as temperature and irradiance which lead to a varying conversion efficiency. This necessitates an optimum use of the incident solar radiation. Since a PV unit supplies maximum electrical power only at a certain operating point, Maximum Power Point Trackers (MPPT) were developed to seek this optimal operation under changing light and load conditions. These methods would ensure an efficient and more reliable energy source. This project is intended to simulate and implement a GMPPT for stand-alone PV system in order to provide a fast, efficient tracking solution. PV generators develop a very complex power versus voltage characteristics. That is, under non-uniform isolation, the PV generators exhibit a curve with many power peaks. Identifying the appropriate peak during the operation is the goal of the MPPT for Proper and efficient operation of the PV system, therefore three algorithms are to be studied during this project which are the incremental conductance algorithm one of the most commonly used technique, the golden section search GSS algorithm and the particle swarm optimisation PSO algorithm, a comparison would be done by implementing the algorithms using MATLAB/SIMULINK to find the best MPPT algorithm that converges rapidly avoiding errors and obtaining the best efficiency.