Design and Modeling of Generalized Photovoltaic System with a Half-Bridge Converter

Due to energy crisis renewable energy has become an important part of power generation systems. Among the renewable energy sources photovoltaic energy is the most important energy resource as it is clean, pollution free and inexhaustible. Photovoltaic system produces direct current through photo voltaic effect. The PV output varies depending on solar irradiation and temperature. In order to step up the voltage, a DC-DC converter is used. To obtain high efficiency, it is desirable to operate the PV at maximum power point. For extracting the maximum power, maximum power point tracker (MPPT) with perturb & observe (P & O) algorithm is used. By this P & O, the array voltage or current is periodically perturbed and PV output power is compared with previous perturbation cycle to control the duty cycle of the DC-DC converter. This paper focuses on modeling of PV with MPPT. The entire system is designed and modeled using MATLAB/SIMULINK and simulation results are presented.