A distributed maximum power point tracking system for solar electric vehicles

Current Solar Electric Vehicles have flat roofs, in an attempt to reduce irradiance mismatches within the strings of PV cells. As a result the aerodynamic performance and design freedom of such vehicles are limited. This paper presents a distributed maximum power point tracking methodology specifically aimed at Solar Electric Vehicles to overcome this problem. As a starting point, the PV-to-isolated bus architecture is selected, since it processes a low amount of power and easily extends to an arbitrary number of groups per string. A new control strategy for this architecture is introduced, that allows for local, decoupled, true maximum power point tracking. The architecture requires isolated, bidirectional, load independent converters, which were realized by means of a series connected synchronous boost converter and LLC resonant converter.