Maximum power tracking of a generic photovoltaic system via a fuzzy controller and a two-stage DC-DC converter

This study presents a new two-stage DC-DC converter for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and a voltage boost of a generic photovoltaic (PV) system. An intelligent MPPT of PV system based on fuzzy logic control (FLC) is presented to adaptively design the proposed fuzzy controlled MPPT controller (FC-MPPTC) while a voltage boost controller (VBC) is used to fix the output voltage to a voltage level that is higher than the required operating voltage to the back-end grid impedance. Modeling and simulation on the PV system and the DC-DC converter circuit are achieved by state-space and the software Powersim. The PV string considered has the rated power around 600 VA under varied partial shadings. The FC-MPPTC and VBC are designed and realized by a DSP module (TMS320F2812) to adjust the duty cycle in the two-stage DC-DC converter. A special FLC algorithm is forged to render an MPPT faster and more accurate than conventional MPPT technique, perturb and observe (P&O). The simulations are intended to validate the performance of the proposed FC-MPPTC. Experiments are conducted and results show that MPPT can be achieved in a fast pace and the efficiency reaches over 90 %, even up to 96 %. It is also found that the optimized tracking speed of the proposed FC-MPPTC is in fact more stable and faster than the general P&O method with the boost voltage capable of offering a stable DC output.