ARDUINO-BASED MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING CHARGE CONTROLLER USING PERTURB & OBSERVE AND CONSTANT-VOLTAGE ALGORITHMS

Abstract

The output power delivered by a photovoltaic (PV) module to charge a battery is dependent on solar radiation incident upon it and the ambient temperature. To reduce PV energy loss, the PV panel is kept at peak efficiency by operating the PV system at the maximum power point (MPP) to deliver maximum power to the battery under charge. In this work, Perturb & Observe (P&O) algorithm was implemented in conjunction with constant voltage (CV), using the MATLAB/Simulink tool. Results obtained from these simulations show that the tracking efficiency of the P&O algorithm decreases with solar irradiation. However, the relatively good performance of the CV algorithm at low irradiation levels augments the P&O method. Both algorithms were implemented in a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) design using an ATMega328 microcontroller operating on a minimal Arduino-compatible integrated development environment (IDE) prototype circuit.