Advanced maximum power point tracking scheme for centralized inverters for large solar photovoltaic power plants

This paper presents an Advanced Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) scheme for 500kW-1MW Grid Connected Centralized inverters for large Photovoltaic (PV) power plants. Conventional MPPT schemes like Perturb and Observe (P&O), Incremental Conductance (IC) and Constant Voltage (CV) alone cannot be used for fast and efficacious tracking of Maximum Power Point (MPP) in centralized inverters. During fast changing environmental conditions and low irradiation, especially during mornings and evenings when the diffused radiation dominants direct radiation, using single MPPT technique cannot give an optimized result, An advanced MPPT technique, that combines constant voltage (passive) and modified P&O method (active) methods, is discussed and simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK Experimental results of a 25kW centralized inverter is also presented.