ADAPTIVE VOLTAGE CONTROL OF THE DC/DC BOOST STAGE IN PV CONVERTERS WITH SMALL INPUT CAPACITOR

ABSTRACT:
In the case of photovoltaic (PV) systems, an adequate PV voltage regulation is fundamental in order to both maximize and limit the power !or this purpose, a large input capacitor has traditionally been used "owever, when reducing that capacitor#s size, the nonlinearities of the PV array ma$e the performance of the voltage regulation become highly dependent on the operating point %his paper analyzes the nonlinear characteristics of the PV generator and clearly states their effect on the control of the dc&dc boost stage of commercial converters by means of a linearization around the operating point %hen, it proposes an adaptive control, which enables the use of a small input capacitor preserving at the same time the performance of the original system with a large capacitor 'xperimental results are carried out for a commercial converter with a () *! input capacitor, and a ( $+ PV array %he results corroborate the theoretical analysis, they evidence the problems of the traditional control, and validate the proposed control with such a small capacitor