Performance Enhancement of PV Array Utilizing Perturb & Observe Algorithm

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) power generation has received significant attention from scientists over the last few years to help reduce the environmental pollution inherently associated with traditional electric generators. The economic convenience of PV generation is directly connected to the cost of the cells and the amount of energy that the arrays are capable of supplying over their life. This paper presents an investigation study on the modeling and simulation of solar PV systems interfaced with the distribution network (DN) using the Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm. The paper investigates the impact of solar radiation variations on the system's performance and proposes an energy storage system to mitigate the power quality issues caused by the intermittency of solar power. The simulation results show that the proposed system enhances the overall performance of the solar PV system by improving energy capture efficiency and reducing power quality issues.  The performance of the proposed method was tested and compared with the fixed perturbation MPPT algorithm under different conditions. Experimental results confirm the feasibility and advantages of the proposed method.