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Fellow Profile
Nirav Patel
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, IL

Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) Technique is used for multiple photovoltaic (PV) arrays operating under different levels of irradiance and temperature. PV arrays can be used at home, roof, laboratory and many other places. The only drawback is its high cost and less efficiency which can be improved up to 95% using MPPT. Then dependency on oil and natural gas to generate power can get reduced. There are several techniques for MPPT, of which we would be using two stage technique as it has several advantages over single stage MPPT technique. This technique aims to locate the global maximum power point on the P-I curve of the interconnected arrays to extract the maximum power from the PV arrays thus bypassing any local maximum that might trap other single stage MPPT technique. The first stage of the proposed technique estimates the local maxima and then estimates the global MPP for individual array; in two arrays system two local maxima will be detected. The second stage of the proposed technique will track the real MPP from the estimated MPP. This starting point is expected to bypass any undesirable local maximum. The main advantages of this technique are 1) ability to find real global MPP and 2) faster than other techniques.

About the Fellow

Nirav Patel was born in India. He completed his Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering in 2007 from Nirma University, India. He is currently pursuing MS in electrical engineering from SIUE. His courses of interest include Power Electronics, VLSI and communications. He has participated in many events that help the environment and has a special interest in research and projects related to this. He participated in several robotic competitions and he also made an automatic DC motor starter, DC DC boost converter. His current research is on increasing the efficiency of PV arrays. His interest was encouraged by his professor to extend his research through NWF.

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