BIBLIOGRAPHIC REVIEW IN THE PHOTOVOLTAIC SECTOR WITH PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO DC-DC CONVERTERS AND THE MOST RECENT MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING ALGORITHM AVAILABLE IN THE LITERATURE

Photovoltaic (PV) generation has become the largest single source of new electricity-generating capacity worldwide, yet a photovoltaic generator has no intrinsic mechanism for operating at its point of maximum power: that point moves continuously with irradiance and temperature and, under partial shading, splits into several local maxima of which only one is global. Extracting the power actually available under these conditions is the joint task of a DC–DC converter, which acts as the actuator of the system, and a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithm, which commands it. This thesis provides a structured, critical bibliographic review of both bodies of literature. Chapter 1 establishes the photovoltaic and control-theoretic background: the physics of the photovoltaic effect, the single- and double-diode equivalent-circuit models, the electrical characteristics of the generator, and the environmental and shading conditions that make tracking necessary. Chapter 2 surveys DC–DC converter topologies for photovoltaic applications, from the classical non-isolated converters through the high step-up families developed to overcome the classical boost converter’s voltage-gain ceiling, and develops a set of converter-selection criteria that include the converter’s behaviour as the actuator of a control loop. Chapter 3, the central chapter of the thesis, surveys the state of the art in MPPT algorithms: the classical perturb-and observe and incremental-conductance methods and their refinements; the advanced and intelligent methods based on fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks and metaheuristic optimisation; and the most recent techniques reported in the literature, including hybrid two-stage architectures, machine-learning and reinforcement-learning approaches, model predictive control, and sliding mode control. Chapter 4 brings the two surveys together in a comparative and critical discussion, arguing - on evidence drawn from studies that vary the converter and the algorithm jointly - that the converter and the tracking algorithm are best understood, and where possible selected, as a single co-designed system rather than as two independently optimised components, and closes with the directions the recent literature suggests for future work. Keywords: photovoltaic systems; DC–DC converters; Maximum Power Point Tracking; MPPT algorithms; perturb and observe; incremental conductance; metaheuristic optimisation; machine learning; model predictive control; sliding-mode control.