Design and simulation of a maximum power point tracking battery charger control system for solar power application

As primary energy sources such as coal and oil were being dried up and have bad influence on the environment, humans need renewable energy which is friendly to the environment. Photovoltaic (PV) energy is one of the most important renewable energy source. It is clean, pollution free and endless. The output characteristics of a PV array are influenced by the environment factors. Also the conversion efficiency of PV arrays is very low. Photovoltaic array simulations has been used to find better methods to implement Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control system to increase the efficiency of solar power systems. In this research, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) was used in photovoltaic (PV) systems to maximize the photovoltaic output power, irrespective of the temperature and radiation conditions. In MPPT system, the PV output power was fed directly to the dc/dc converter and the output of the MPPT control was used to control the dc/dc converter switch in order to operate at the Maximum Power Point (MPP). Incremental conductance algorithm was used to track the MPP of the PV module. The Ćuk converter was used as a dc/dc converter to achieve the power/voltage level conversion. The MPPT system was modelled and simulated using Matlab / Simulink software to track the maximum output power from PV array and to charge a battery bank. Simulation results were compared to the system without MPPT to show that the PV module with MPPT system increased the efficiency of the PV module.