Optimizing solar energy efficiency with an improved hill-climbing maximum power point tracking control approach: hardware implementation

This article implements maximum power point tracking(MPPT)based on the improved hill-climbing algorithm for photovoltaic(PV)systems feeding resistive loads.A direct current-to-direct current boost converter is inserted between the PV system and the load to achieve matching.The converter is managed using MPPT based on the hill-climbing algorithm.The objective of this paper is to optimize the code program to achieve the best compromise between accuracy and rapidity by implementing this algorithm using a microcontroller.Two PV systems are tested under identical meteorological conditions.In the first,an improved hill-climbing MPPT controller is used whereas,in the second,the conventional version is employed.The experimental results obtained show a signifi-cant enhancement in terms of speed for the improved algorithm with a value of 0.4 s for the response time and 3%for the oscillation power;those values remain satisfactory in terms of precision of the algorithm compared with the conventional system studied and the compared algorithm from the literature.