Photovoltaic Low Voltage DC-DC Buck Converter for Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT)

Abstract

Utilization of renewable energy is a good potential approach to overcome environmental issues. Clean energy sources such as solar arrays, wind generators and others have drawn wide interest in both research and industry fields. However, solar energy attracts much attention because it can be used for powering varieties of appliances. Conversion of solar energy into electricity has no running cost due to freely available, improves generation of electricity, and reduces pollution due to fossil fuels. The efficient conversion of photovoltaic (PV) energy is feasible with Maximum point Tracking (MPPT) algorithm and a DC-DC converter. A MPPT is employed for extracting the utmost power from the solar PV module and transferring that power to the load. The voltage available from the PV module is variable and to get a stable voltage from solar panels, DC-DC converters are required for constant power production. This study used a synchronous buck converter as an interface between PV module and the load. The buck converter functions as a solar charge controller to step down the PV voltage to charge a 12V lead acid battery. The analysis was performed by collecting the voltage and current data from PV panel in different atmospheric conditions and the output voltage gain from buck converter. The efficiency of proposed buck converter is compared with the previous proposed traditional buck converter. The analysis shows that the efficiency of the proposed buck converter is 91.9% and it is improved compared to the traditional buck converter.