Design and implementation of a new adaptive MPPT controller for solar PV systems

This research provides an adaptive control design in a photovoltaic system (PV) for maximum power point tracking (MPPT). In the PV system, MPPT strategies are used to deliver the maximum available power to the load under solar radiation and atmospheric temperature changes. This article presents a new adaptive control framework to enhance the performance of MPPT, which will minimize the complexity in system control and efficiently manage uncertainties and disruptions in the environment and PV system. Here, the MPPT algorithm is decoupled with model reference adaptive control (MRAC) techniques, and the system gains MPPT with overall system stability. The simulation and design of the new MRAC for MPPT based on a boost converter are addressed here. Moreover, a mathematical model is formulated and an efficient MRAC is designed for MPPT. To validate the robustness of the controller, MATLAB/Simulink is utilized to compare with the state-of-the-art approach, which is incremental conductance (INC) and perturb & observe (P&O) under various operating conditions based on the convergence time, tracking efficiency, PV current & voltage ripple, overall efficiency, and error rates. The proposed controller’s average tracking efficiency is 99.77% and 99.69% under diverse temperature and radiation conditions, respectively. In addition, it takes only 3.6 msec to capture MPP, which is around ten times faster than INC and twelve times faster than the P&O approach. When compared to INC and P&O, the MPP error rates in the MRAC-MPPT scheme are significantly lower. The simulation outcomes indicate that the presented controller exhibits excellent tracking under varying circumstances like solar radiation and temperature.