An Investigation on Multi-junction Solar Cell for Maximum Power Point Tracking Using P&O and ANN Techniques

Renewable energy resources are becoming a vital part for the energy production in today's world. Generation of energy by using solar equipment is increasing day by day. A multi-junction solar cell is the one which consists of multiple junctions taking into consideration the tunnel junction in the solar cell so that efficiency of the solar cell is improved. Temperature and solar irradiance are consequential factors in order to determine the ability of the solar cell. A noticeable change in any one factor shows a clear change in the values in the Voltage-Current (V-I) and Power-Voltage (P-V) curves of the solar cell. The conversion efficiency can be improved by some MPPT techniques that are applied on the solar cell. Perturb & observe (P&O) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) techniques are implemented and compared here to attain a better technique for the extraction of solar energy. The plots and graphs here depict the miscellaneous characteristics of the multi-junction solar cell including effect of strategies applied on it in MATLAB/Simulink.