Simple photovoltaic solar cell dynamic sliding mode controlled maximum power point tracker for battery charging applications

In this paper, we present a maximum power point tracker and estimator for a PV system to estimate the point of maximum power, to track this point and force it to reach this point in finite time and to stay there for all future time in order to provide the maximum power available to the load. The load will be composed of a battery bank. This is obtained by controlling the duty cycle of a DC-DC converter using sliding mode control. The sliding mode controller is given the estimated maximum power point as a reference for it to track that point and force the PV system to operate in this point. This method has the advantage that it will guarantee the maximum output power possible by the array configuration while considering the dynamic parameters temperature and solar irradiance and delivering more power to charge the battery. The procedure of designing, simulating and results are presented in this paper.