Analysis of distributed peak power tracking in photovoltaic systems

It has been demonstrated that performing localized maximum peak power tracking (MPPT) on each photovoltaic (PV) panel, instead of using a single MPPT controller across the PV string can substantially increase the total harvested power, since each panel experiences unique illumination and temperature conditions. In this work, the effect of the dc-dc converter efficiency on the power savings from distributed MPPT (DMPPT) is analyzed for a wide range of test cases and different PV panel parameters. The benefit of DMPPT for a practical system is shown to be up to 25% for a standard deviation of σ= 0.2 A set of modular hardware-based PV panel emulators (ePVs) is presented. The ePVs can be programmed to match the unique i/v curves of real panels under various conditions and can therefore be used to optimize future DMPPT systems.