DPP Converters with Reduced Sensors

Partial shading has a negative impact on a photovoltaics (PV) system and significantly reduces its extracted power and efficiency. Differential power processing (DPP) has shown to be effective in reducing power losses and thus improving the efficiency of partially shaded PV arrays. DPP enables independent maximum power point (MPP) operation of each PV submodule without processing the entire power output lessening the amount of processing power. However, current DPP methods require current and voltage sensors for each DPP converter, in addition to those of the central converter, to achieve MPP operation. These additional sensors increase complexity and implementation cost. To meet this challenge, this paper investigates the possibility of eliminating the DPP sensors and relying only on the already installed sensors of the central converter. A comprehensive validation through Simulink is presented for verification and validation.