Single Current Sensor Based Flexible Power Point Tracking Algorithm of PV Inverter

Flexible power point tracking (FPPT) algorithms are proposed to make the PV inverter more friendly to the grid. However, the existing FPPT algorithm is realized based on both voltage and current sensors on the PV side. On the one hand, the cost is added by adopting both current and voltage sensors at the same time. On the other hand, the calculation burden is increased by calculating the PV power. Single-sensor-based MPPT algorithms have been proposed a lot in the past year, where the power of the PV is only calculated by PV current or voltage. Because the output voltage of the boost converter can be regarded as a constant in the two-stage PV inverter. It gives the opportunity to realize the single current sensor-based FPPT algorithm. So, in this paper, a single sensor-based FPPT algorithm with the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) operation and constant power generation (CPG) operation is proposed. As a result, the proposed algorithm shows advantages as high tracking performance and low hardware cost. The experimental results show the advantages of the proposed algorithm.