An improved MPPT technique for high gain DC-DC converter using model predictive control for photovoltaic applications

This paper presents an enhanced Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) of Photovoltaic (PV) systems by means of Model Predictive Control (MPC) techniques. The PV array can feed power to the load through a DC/DC converter boosting the output voltage. Due to stochastic behavior of solar energy, MPPT control technique of PV arrays is required to operate at maximum power point. Extracting the maximum power from PV systems has been widely investigated within the literature. The main contribution of this paper is enhancement of the Incremental Conductance (INC) method through a fixed step predictive control under measured fast solar radiation variation. The proposed predictive control to achieve Maximum Power Point (MPP) speeds up the control loop since it predicts error before the switching signal is applied to the selected high gain multilevel DC-DC converter. Comparing the developed technique to the conventional INC method shows significant improvement in PV system performance. Experimental validation is presented using the dSpace CP 1103 to implement the proposed MPC-MPPT.