Application of Centered Differentiation and Steepest Descent to Maximum Power Point Tracking

This paper concentrates on two critical aspects to improve the performance of maximum power point tracking (MPPT). One improvement is to accurately locate the position of the maximum power point (MPP) by using the centered differentiation. Another effort is to reduce the oscillation around the MPP in steady state by controlling active perturbations. This paper also adopts the method of steepest descent for MPPT, which shows faster dynamic response and smoother steady state than the method of hill climbing. Comprehensive experimental evaluations have successfully illustrated the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.