Evaluation of performance of MPPT equipment in photovoltaic system

In recent years, environmental problems have become serious issue environmental problems, and using low emission energy is the focus of worldwide attention. The use of small-scale photovoltaic (PV) systems for flashing light and emergency power is spreading widely and these are installed in places with confined space and they generate low output power. We propose, for the first time, that these small-scale PV systems should have maximum power point tracking (MPPT) to make the most of their performance. A PV cell has an I-V curve (current-voltage characteristic curve), and has an optimal operating point to output the maximum power. This point is influenced by the surroundings such as the PV module temperature and solar radiation. Therefore, MPPT equipment can track the maximum power point. However, it may not converge on the maximum power point due to the rapid change in solar radiation, and there is the mismatch loss. Moreover, PV systems have other losses such as operating loss within the MPPT equipment and PV module temperature increase loss. In this paper, we evaluated the validity of introducing MPPT into a PV system and compared the characteristics on a fine day and those on a cloudy day to evaluate these losses. Then we totaled up the measurements for the half-year from the beginning of September to the end of February.