Auxiliary services provided by Smart Maximum Power Point Tracking Converters: State of art and implementations

In the last period, photovoltaic technologies price reduction has determined their wide diffusion even in the absence of government incentives. So there are numerous centres of photovoltaic generation distributed throughout the country. This scenario supports the creation and development of new energy contexts such as Net Zero Energy Cluster and DC micro-grids. These new energy models base their success on communication and cooperation among various devices and technologies used. In the near future, the data exchange between network devices will allow real time schedule and management of energy generation and consumption. Innovative devices are required to monitor and communicate energetic production data, signaling a fault or alarm condition, to reconfigure parts of the plant in particular operating conditions. In this paper, a new concept of Smart Maximum Power Point Tracking converter is presented. In details, the DC-DC converter adopted to optimize photovoltaic module energetic performances is exploited to provide users and grid operators with additional services, such as data monitoring and transmission, burglar and fire alarms, matrix reconfiguration, diagnostics, etc. A hierarchical architecture of Smart Maximum Power Point Tracking converters for Net Zero Energy Buildings and DC microgrids performance optimization is presented.