A simple perturb and observe MPPT scheme for Cascaded H-Bridge based photovoltaic system

In this paper a simple Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) scheme for Cascaded H-Bridge (CHB) converter based Photovoltaic (PV) system is proposed. The scheme uses the modularity of the CHB converter to enhance the tracking performance compared to conventional perturb and observe scheme. Along with superior performance, the hardware structure and the required computations of the proposed scheme are simpler than the conventional scheme. A 3.3 kW peak solar PV system with a single-phase 7-level CHB converter is modeled in MATLAB/Simulink environment as a case study. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by simulation results in two different scenarios. At first, the startup and speed of convergence is studied and then, operation under dynamic environmental conditions is considered.