A Distributed Approach to Maximum Power Point Tracking for Photovoltaic Submodule Differential Power Processing

Journal Article · Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2014.2330335· OSTI ID:1211439

Qin, SB; Cady, ST; Dominguez-Garcia, AD; Pilawa-Podgurski, RCN

This paper presents the theory and implementation of a distributed algorithm for controlling differential power processing converters in photovoltaic (PV) applications. This distributed algorithm achieves true maximum power point tracking of series-connected PV submodules by relying only on local voltage measurements and neighbor-to-neighbor communication between the differential power converters. Compared to previous solutions, the proposed algorithm achieves reduced number of perturbations at each step and potentially faster tracking without adding extra hardware; all these features make this algorithm well-suited for long submodule strings. The formulation of the algorithm, discussion of its properties, as well as three case studies are presented. The performance of the distributed tracking algorithm has been verified via experiments, which yielded quantifiable improvements over other techniques that have been implemented in practice. Both simulations and hardware experiments have confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed distributed algorithm.

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AR0000217
• OSTI ID: 1211439
• Journal Information: IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 30, Issue 4; ISSN 0885-8993
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English