Improvement of Power Production Efficiency Following the Application of the GD InC Maximum Power Point Tracking Method in Photovoltaic Systems

This paper proposes a new maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method based on machine learning with improved power production efficiency for application to photovoltaic (PV) systems. Power loss occurs in the incremental conductance (InC) method, depending on the size of the voltage step used to track the maximum power point. Additionally, the size of the voltage step must be specified by the initial user; however, an appropriate size cannot be determined in a rapidly changing environment. To solve this problem, this study presents a gradient descent InC (GD InC) method that optimizes the size of the voltage step by applying an optimization method based on machine learning. The effectiveness of the GD InC method was verified and the optimized size of the voltage step was confirmed to produce the largest amount of power. When the size of the voltage step was optimized, a maximum difference of 4.53% was observed compared with the case when the smallest amount of power was produced. The effectiveness of the GD InC method, which improved the efficiency of power production by optimizing the size of the voltage step, was verified. Power can be produced efficiently by applying the GD InC method to PV systems.