An Online Sensorless Fractional Open Circuit Voltage Based Method for Tracking Maximum Power from Photovoltaic Module

Abstract

An online sensorless fractional open circuit voltage method is proposed in this manuscript for tracking the maximum power from the photovoltaic(PV) module. Initially, open circuit voltage of the PV module is calculated by obtaining temperature and irradiance values using public application program interfaces. In this approach, the maximum power voltage is calculated by multiplying the open circuit voltage of the module with a coefficient that is determined using datasheet parameters. This calculated value serves as a reference and is compared with the actual panel voltage. The resulting difference is given to a PI controller to generate PWM signals for the power converter. To simulate real-world conditions, a Wi-Fi-based microcontroller is employed alongside MATLAB Simulink. The effectiveness of this method is verified by comparing it with the conventional perturb and observe method.