A steepest-descent based maximum power point tracking technique for a photovoltaic power system

This paper proposed a new steepest-descent based maximum power point tracker (MPPT) technique for a photovoltaic (PV) system. Power generation by a PV system depends on solar cell temperature and solar irradiance. Again PV system may have low power conversion efficiency if it operates at any arbitrary operating point because for a PV system at a single operating point called the maximum power point (MPP); maximum power is generated by the PV system. The objective of MPPT is to drag the operating point of PV panel in this MPP in all environmental condition. The proposed steepest-descent based maximum power point tracker (SDMPPT) has a very simple structure. In this paper, the accuracy of the proposed SDMPPT is verified by considering two factors such as absolute percentage error in MPP tracking and MPPT efficiency. Using MATLAB/SIMULINK and Opal-RT, the efficacy of the proposed SDMPPT technique is verified.