IC design of DMPPT controller for Cascade and MCCU topology of photovoltaic systems

This paper presents IC design of Distributed Maximum Power Point Tracking (DMPPT) controller for Cascade and Mismatched Current Compensation Unit (MCCU) for photovoltaic systems. The Cascade part can handle the conventional DMPPT algorithm and the MCCU part can handle the differential power processing algorithm. This solution can mitigate mismatches in photovoltaic(PV) power system, while introducing no insertion loss and reducing the system cost compared to a microprocessor-based solution. A 0.18um 1-poly 4-metal 5V process was selected for the IC development. MPPT peak efficiency of over 99% is achieved.