PV current sensorless MPPT for a single-phase PV inverter

This paper presents a maximum power point tracker (MPPT) for single-stage single-phase inverters. The proposed MPPT provides a solution to the issue of tracking maximum power point (MPP) of a photovoltaic (PV) module without measuring the PV current. This is of practical interest as the method permits the elimination of the PV current sensor, thus making a more economically attractive implementation. The design of the proposed MPPT is based on the direct-gradient descent method, and thus, it is referred as DG-MPPT-iless. It is aimed to have a rapid response on situations of rapid changes in irradiation and temperature. In the DG-MPPT-iless the information originally provided by the PV current sensor is reconstructed by estimators incorporated in the controller. Simulations and experiments have been carried out to test the dynamical performance of the proposed method.