Strategies for increasing photovoltaic systems efficiency

Power generation from photovoltaic (PV) technology is simple, free, available, reliable, clean and suitable for off grid and grid connected applications. Efficiency of PV system is low and cells used in PV panels for electricity generation are usually single junction type with an efficiency of somewhere around 15%. In this article, two strategies for increasing PV systems efficiency are presented. First, design a control scheme to access maximum power point tracking (MPPT). Second, using specific thermoelectric cooler (TEC), which Sb-V2O5-TeO2 oxide glasses are used as TEC’s semiconductor, to cool the surface of PV panels in order to improve their efficiency by reducing the PV panel temperature. The case study in this paper consists of PV, battery (BATT), DC link, inverter, and local AC loads. This paper details the study of incremental conductance MPPT algorithm. The MPPT controller has been verified by modeling the PV system with MPPT algorithm in MATLAB/SIMULINK Software. Also, the figures of merit for glasses are calculated to use in TEC.

کلیدواژه ها:

PV efficiency ، MPPT ، incremental conductance (IC) algorithm ، TEC ، figure of merit