A modified adaptive hill climbing maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control method for photovoltaic power systems

A powerful attraction of photovoltaic (PV) power systems is that they produce electric power without harming the environment, by directly transforming a free inexhaustible source of energy, solar irradiation, into electricity. This fact, together with the continuing decrease in PV array cost and increase in efficiency, implies a promising role for PV generation systems in the near future. The study started with the requirement that photovoltaic power systems should be integrated with specific control algorithms to deliver maximum possible power. In this thesis, the PV power system was introduced at the beginning, and a simple maximum power point tracking (MPPT) system was presented and analyzed. Next, different existing MPPT control approaches were discussed and a proposed control algorithm, namely modified adaptive hill climbing (MAHC) method, was introduced. Then, the results of simulation proved that the performance could be improved in both transient and steady state of the suggested control system. Finally, a simple test bed system with digital signal processor (DSP) was designed and implemented with optimized control software to verify the proposals.