Design and implementation of a high‐performance technique for tracking PV peak power

Most maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques based on sliding‐mode control (SMC) use another method such as perturb and observe or incremental conductance (IncCond) to provide current or voltage reference which makes the system more complex. To reduce the complexity and to increase the photovoltaic (PV) array efficiency, a direct control high‐performance MPPT based on improved SMC has been investigated in this study. Using two different step sizes can follow the PV peak power at different operating conditions with rapid convergence and greater accuracy. The new SMC‐based MPPT designed for boost‐type DC/DC converters is compared with a conventional and modified IncCond method, and to a classical SMC method which is very similar to that applied by Chu et al. The proposed PV‐MPPT system is tested during a stringent profile of sunshine variation as recommended by the European Norm 50530, by simulation within MATLAB/Simulink TM tools and verified by implementation using a test bench based on DS1104 R&D controller board. The obtained results are satisfactory and demonstrate that the new SMC can track the MPP quickly within 0.003 s and with good accuracy close to 99%.