High Gain DC-DC Converter with Enhanced Adaptive MPPT for PV Applications

The increasing demand for electricity has pushed more effort to focus on renewable energy sources to satisfy the consumer. The renewable energy sources are playing a major role in the generation of electricity. Out of all the renewable energy sources, solar has emerged as one of the best sources of energy since it is clean, inexhaustible and eco-friendly. However, the voltage generated by the solar cell is not sufficient for any consumer load and it is also variable. Therefore, it is necessary to implement DCDC converters for regulating and improving the output voltage of the solar panel. In order to extract the maximum output from the PV (Photovoltaic) panel, a comparative analysis of various MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) algorithms is proposed in this paper. The proposed enhanced adaptive P&O (Perturb and Observe) algorithm is modeled and implemented with a high gain DC-DC converter. The converter investigated in this paper consists of a single power electronic switch (MOSFET) for its operation, which leads to reduction of switching and conduction losses. The proposed converter has less ripple content and a high conversion ratio. A simulation study of the proposed power electronic converter powered by PV source is carried out in MATLAB/SIMULINK and the results are validated using an experimental setup.