International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2014)
DC-DC Buck-Converter for MPPT of PV System
Dhananjay Choudhary1, Anmol Ratna Saxena2,
1,2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Madhav Institute of Technology & Science, Gwalior, India
AbstractAlthough solar energy is available throughout the
day its insolation varies from morning to evening and with
changing climatic conditions. As the efficiency of solar PV
panel is low it becomes mandatory to extract maximum power
from the PV panel at any given period of time. Several
maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques are
proposed for the purpose. Incremental conductance MPPT
technique has higher steady-state accuracy and environmental
adaptability. This paper investigates implementation issues of
Incremental conductance MPPT algorithm. High frequency
DC-DC Buck converter is used to interface PV panel with
load. The Matlab Simulink model of the system is developed
and results are validated with experimental results obtained
using laboratory prototype of the system.
Keywords Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM), DC-DC
Buck Converter, Incremental Conductance (IC), Maximum
Power Point Tracking (MPPT), Photovoltaic (PV)
I. INTRODUCTION
The depletion of fossil fuel resources on a worldwide basis
has necessitated an urgent search for alternative energy
sources to meet up the present day demands. Among all the
renewable energy option solar energy is clean inexhaustible
and environment friendly potential source. The harnessing
of solar energy using PV modules comes with its own
problems that arise from the change in insolation conditions.
These changes in insolation condition severely affect the
efficiency and output power of the PV modules [1].
A lot of research has been done to improve the efficiency of
the PV modules. A number of methods to track the
maximum power point of a PV module have been proposed
to overcome the limitation of efficiency [2]. A MPPT is
used for extracting the maximum power from the solar PV
module and transferring that power to the load. And a dc-dc
converter (step up / step down) act as an interface between
the load and the PV module as it serves the purpose of
transferring maximum power from the solar PV module to
the load. By changing the duty cycle the load impedance is
matched with source impedance to attain the maximum
power from the PV panel [3]. Fig. 1 shows the basic block
diagram of DC-DC Converter operating at MPP. Different
maximum power point tracking algorithms have been
proposed including fractional open circuit voltage,
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fractional short circuit current , perturb and observe (P&O),
incremental conductance, and artificial-intelligence-based
algorithms [4]-[5]. These algorithms may vary in there
complexity, efficiency, cost, and there potential application.
In high power applications, the cost of MPPT control is low
as against the cost of the photovoltaic (PV) array and power
converters. However, for low power applications, the
implementation cost of an MPPT algorithm is a concern [6]-
[7]. The most commonly used hill-climbing MPPT
technique is the P&O algorithm. The P&O algorithm
perturbs the operating point of the PV generator by
increasing or decreasing a control parameter by a small
amount and measuring the PV array output before and after
the perturbation. If the power increases, the algorithm
continues to perturb the system in the same direction;
otherwise the system is perturbed in the opposite direction
[8].
Another very popular hill-climbing MPPT algorithm is the
incremental conductance. This MPPT algorithm is based on
the fact that the power-voltage curve of a PV generator at
constant solar insolation and cell temperature levels has
normally only one MPP [9]-[10]. At this point the derivative
of the power with respect to the voltage equals zero which
means that the sum of instantaneous conductance (Ipv/Vpv)
and the incremental conductance (dIpv/dVpv) equals zero. On
the right-hand side of the MPP, the sum of the instantaneous
conductance is negative while on the left-hand side of the
MPP, the sum is positive. The incremental conductance
algorithm compares the instantaneous conductance of a PV
generator with its incremental conductance and decides
whether to increase or decrease a control parameter
accordingly [11]. An improved MPPT algorithm for PV
sources was proposed to reduce the tracking time where a
dc-dc boost converter was used to track the MPP and was
brought out that tracking performance depends upon the
tracking algorithm used [12]. In this paper, the tracking
capability of incremental with buck converter conductance
at different insolation level is presented and the simulation
results are verified with the experimental results.
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2014)
Where I0 is the reverse saturation current of the diode, q is
Iout
DC-DC the electron charge, Vd is the voltage across the diode, K is
Converter
19
Boltzmann constant 1.38 10 J /K and T is the
SOLAR LOAD
PANEL Vout junction temperature in Kelvin (k).
Substituting eq. (2) in (1) gives
I I ph I0 (eqVd / KT 1) (3)

V IRs
Substituting voltage across diode Vd in eq.
N
Ipv (3) gives
Vpv MPPT I I ph I 0 (eq(V IRs )/ NKT ) 1) (4)
Where, V is the PV cell voltage, T is the temperature (in
Fig. 1 DC-DC converter for operation at the MPP Kelvin) and N is the diode ideality factor []. The typical I-V
and P-V characteristics of the PV module are shown in
II. MODELING AND CHARACTERISTICS OF PV Fig. 3 & 4.
MODULE
The phenomenenon named photovoltaic effect consists
mainly transforming the solar light in electric energy by
means of the semi conductor devices named photovoltaic
cells. Fig. 2 shows the equivalent circuit diagram of a single
solar cell. Here, I ph is the photo current source with a
reverse connected diode. RS and RSh are series and shunt
resistance respectively. As the value of RSh is very large it
is neglected in the analysis [13].

Rs I
Fig. 3 I-V characteristics of a PV cell

Iph D Rsh V

Fig.2 Single diode model of a PV cell

The output current from the photovoltaic array is

I I ph I d (1)
I d I 0 (eqvd / KT 1) (2) Fig. 4 P-V characteristics of a PV cell

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2014)

Here, Short-circuit current (Isc) is the maximum output

current, open-circuit voltage (Voc) is the maximum output
voltage, MPP current (Im) is the maximum power point i L VL
ic
current, MPP voltage (Vm) is the maximum power point
voltage and MPP Power (Pm) is the power at maximum
power point these all values are at certain sunlight and
temperature of the PV module. Vg C R Vo

III. DC-DC BUCK CONVERTER

The dc-dc buck converter converts a higher dc input
voltage to lower dc output voltage. The basic dc-dc buck
converter topology is shown in Fig. 5. It consists of a (b)
Fig.6 .Buck Converter Cicruit when switch:- (a) turns ON (b) turns OFF
controlled switch SW , an uncontrolled switch diode (D), an
inductor L, an capacitance C and a load resistance R [14]. In the description of converter operation it is assumed that
all the components are ideal and also the converter operates
in Continuous conduction mode (CCM). In CCM operation
Sw L the inductor current flows continuously over one switching
period. The switch is either ON or OFF according to the
switching position this results in two circuit states. The first
sub-circuit state is when the switch is turned ON, the diode
is reverse biased and inductor current flows through the
switch, which can be shown in Fig. 6(a). The second sub-
circuit state is when the switch is turned OFF and current
freewheels through the diode [15-16] which is shown in Fig.
Vg D C R 6(b).

When switch SW is ON and D is reverse biased, then

inductor current iL and capacitor voltage VC are given by
eq. (5) and (6).
diL 1 (5)
Fig. 5 DC-DC buck converter topology Vg Vo
dt L
L
dv0 dvc 1
ic (6)
IL + VL
_ dt dt C
When the switch is OFF and D is forward biased, iL and
capacitor voltage VC are given by eq. (7) and (8).
Vg C R Vo
diL 1
V0 (7)
dt L
dv0 dvc 1
ic (8)
(a) dt dt C
The state space representation for converter circuit
configuration can be expressed as given in eq. (9)

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2014)
Equation (13) is the condition to achieve the maximum
dx A1 x BU
1 when Sw is closed
power point, when the variance of the output conductance
dt A2 x B2Uwhen Sw is opened is equal to the negative of the output conductance, the
module will work at the maximum power point. The flow
chart of the incremental conductance is shown in Fig. 7
Where X [ x1 x2 ]T [Vc iL ]T (9) [12 ].

The state transition matrix A, and B input matrix are START

system matrices as shown in eq. (10)
PV array voltage and
1 arC a current sampling
L rL R RL
1
0
(10)
A1 A2 , B1 L , B2
1 arC a 0
V(k)=V(k)-V(k-1)
1 0
R
I(k)=I(k)-I(k-1)
C RC

R v=0 YES
Where a
R rC NO
YES YES
di/dv=-I/V I=0
IV. INCREMENTAL CONDUCTANCE MPPT NO
ALGORITHM YES di/dv>-I/V I>0
YES

A typical solar panel converts about 30-40 % of the incident NO

solar insolation in to electrical energy [17]. Maximum Inc. Dec. Dec. Inc.
power point tracking technique is used to improve the No No
duty Duty Duty Duty
efficiency of the solar panel. According to maximum power change change
ratio ratio ratio ratio
transfer theorem, the power output of a circuit is maximum
when the Thevenin impedance of the circuit (source
impedance) matches with the load impedance. Hence the Update History
problem of tracking the maximum power point reduces to V(k-1)=V(k)
an impedance matching problem. There are several I(k-1)=I(k)
techniques to track the MPPT but this paper deal with
Incremental conductance.
A. Incremental Conductance Algorithm END
Incremental Conductance method uses the information of Fig. 7 Flow chart of the Incremental Conductance method
source voltage and current to find the desired operating
point. From the P-V curve of a PV module shown in Fig. 4 In this flow chart, V(k) is the new detection voltage and
it is clear that slope is zero at maximum point [17], so the I(k) is the new detection current, V(k-1) and I(k-1) is
formulas are as follows previous detection values. When the new value is read in to
the program, it calculates the previous value compare with
dP d VI the new one, and then determine the voltage differentials is
dV mpp dV (11) zero or not, according the voltage differentials is zero, the
current difference can be determined zero or not. If both of
them are zero, it shows that they have the same value of
dI impedance and the value of duty ratio will remain the same
0 I V MPP (12)
dV as before. If the voltage differential is zero, but the current
differential is not zero, it shows that the insolation has
dI I changed. When the difference of the current values is
MPP (13) greater than zero, duty ratio will increase, when the
dV V difference of the current value is less than zero the duty
ratio will decrease. If the voltage differential is not zero
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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2014)
determine it whether satisfy the eq. 13 or not, when eq. 13 V0 DVg (17)
is satisfied the slope of the power curve will be zero that
means the system is operating at MPP, if the variance of Where, D is the duty cycle
conductance is greater than the negative conductance
values, it means the slope of the power curve is positive Substituting the value of V0 in eq. (16) we get:
and the duty ratio is to be increased, otherwise it should be
decreased [18].
DV
2
The motive is to automatically find the voltage VMPP or g / Z0 Vg 2 / Zi (18)

current I MPP at which a PV module should operate to This reduces eq. (18) to
obtain the maximum power output PMPP under a given
temperature and irradiance. As switch-mode dc-dc D2
(19)
converter is used as intermediate power processor, it Z 0 Zi
changes the values of current and voltage levels such that
maximum power can be extracted from a PV module. A And finally
buck converter can be used to maximize the power transfer
through the use of impedance matching. An application of D Z 0 / Zi (20)
this is in a maximum power point tracking commonly used
in photovoltaic system. The eq. (20) shows that it is possible to adjust the
impedance ratio by adjusting the duty cycle. This is very
For electric power eq. (14) is as follow useful in calculating the MPPT because insolation changes
very dynamically.
V0 I0 VgIg (14)
Where:- Table-1 PV Panel Specification
V0 is the output voltage, I 0 is the output current, PV panel parameters Values

is the power efficiency (ranging from 0 to 1), Vg is the Voc 22.04V

input voltage, I g is the input current Isc 1.13A
By ohms law
Pmax. 20watt
V0
I0 Vmpp 17.77V
Z0
(15) Impp 1.26A
V
Ig g
Zi Tolerence 5%

Where Z0 is the output impedance, Zi is the input

impedance.
V. RESULTS & DISCUSSION
Substituting these expressions for I0 and I g in to the The Matlab Simulink model of the complete system is
power equation (14) yields: shown in Fig. 8. The complete model is divided in to three
parts for easy understanding i.e. PV model, IC MPPT
2
V
2 method & DC-DC Buck converter, in PV panel total of 36
V0
g (16) individual cells are connected in series to yield a
Z0 Zi voltage VPV 18V . The I-V and P-V characteristics of the
model under varying solar insolation condition with fixed
As we know that for the continuous mode, (where I L >0) ambient temperature are shown in Fig. (9) & (10)
respectively. It is observed that both open circuit voltage

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Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2014)
and short-circuit current gets reduced at lower solar algorithm based on the solar insolation and prevailing
insolation levels. ambient condition. The dc-dc buck converter is designed to
operate at 25 kHz.

Fig. 8 Simulink block diagram of complete PV system

Fig. 11 INC MPPT simulation setup

Fig. 12 shows the change in solar insolation from 500 w/m2

to 1000 w/m2 at 250c. The variation in input power and
voltage is shown in Fig. 13&14 respectively. The variation
in output power, voltage and current is shown in Fig. 15, 16
& 17 respectively.

Fig. 9 Characteristic curve of (Ipv-Vpv) at different solar insolation

Fig. 12 Change is solar insolation

Fig. 10 Characteristics curve of (Ppv-Vpv) at different solar insolation

The power system block set model of DC-DC buck

converter supplied with PV panel is shown in Fig. 11. The
duty ratio for the converter is decided by the MPPT
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Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2014)

Fig.13. Input power

Fig. 16 Output power

Fig. 17 Duty ratio variation

Fig. 14 Input voltage A fixed resistance of RL =4.5ohm is connected across the
load side of the buck converter to match the input
resistance Rin because for the buck converter input
resistance is always greater than the load resistance and the
relation of input resistance with load resistance and duty
ratio is given by eq. (21).

RL
Rin (21)
D2
At simulation time 0.06 there is an increase in solar
insolation from 500 w/m2 to 1000 w/m2 and it is clear from
the above Fig. (13-16) that output voltage is decreasing and
output current is increasing and from Fig. 17 it is also clear
that at simulation time 0.06 when insolation are changing
the duty ratio is adjusting itself to produce maximum
Fig. 15 Output current power at different insolation.
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To verify proposed theory a laboratory prototype PV In Fig. 15 and fig. 17 shows the output voltage and duty
system is constructed as shown in fig. 18. The artificial sun ratio values for MPPT. Experimental results shown in Fig.
is realized by the incandescent lamp set and the solar 18 also verify the IC algorithm, as it is clear from the Fig.
insolation on the PV panel is changed by changing the 19 for the duty ratio 58% and input voltage of 18 volt the
magnitude of AC supply voltage.The prototype converter achieved output voltage is 8.10 Volt. This verifies the
circuit parameter values are: L=150H, C=50F. The laboratory prototype model results with the Simulation
semiconductor devices used for making DC-DC buck results.
converter are an International rectifier IRF 540 Power
mosfet, a Motorola MUR 840 fast recovery diode. An VI. CONCLUSION
international rectifier IR2110 gate driver drives the
switching device Mosfet. IC 6N136 is used for isolation A standalone PV system connected with buck converter
purpose. and IC algorithm for extracting maximum power at
different environmental condition is proposed. We realize
COMPUTER that the basic function of DC-DC converter in PV system is
like intermediate power processor which changes the
OSCILLOSCOPE
AUTO-
current and voltage levels such that maximum power can
DC-SUPPLY
DSP- TRANSFORMER be extracted from the PV array. Changing voltage and
BOARD
current level is nothing but converting a given fixed load to
a variable load. Hence the results obtained at different
DRIVER BUCK-
CIRCUIT CONVERTER
BATTERY
environmental condition are found to be satisfactory as
they validate the experimental results too. MPPT algorithm
responds in very fast manner and its accuracy is higher that
it reaches to steady state very quickly.
PHOTO-VOLTAIC MODULE

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors sincerely thank Director MITS, Gwalior, India
for his support during this research work.
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