Individual solar cells balance for maximum power extraction in series arrays

CHIACCHIARINI, HECTOR; CECI, JONATAN; OLIVA, ALEJANDRO RAUL; MANDOLESI, PABLO

Bariloche

Congreso; Biennial Congress of Argentina (ARGENCON), 2014; 2014

IEEE Argentina

Ladder converter architectures offer substantial improvements compared to traditional solutions since eachconverter only needs to process the power difference between series connected photovoltaic (PV) devices (module,substring, cells). A strategy for balancing the current produced by each cell is studied in this work, using agroup of dc-dc buck-boost converters. A controller capable of profiting from the distributed structure and trackingthe maximum power point (MPP) is proposed. Simulation results show that the control strategy effectively drives thesystem to the optimum operating point even when there are changes on the cell illumination.