Fast and simple numerical computation of Maximum Power Point in PV systems

The increasing implementation of Photovoltaics sys-tem for energy production in small scale equipment makes feasible the possibility of develop smart module. One of the aspect really of interest is the accurate and fast computation of maximum power point from available data. Several mathematical approaches have been proposed in the last years and, in this works, a very simple robust and fast methodology is presented, based on the one-diode model. Few algebraic manipulations of one-diode equation allow to define a computational scheme which can be implemented in any kind of computing system (from workstation to small microcontroller). The proposed algorihm was test against data available in literature and implemented also in a low cost microcontroller, with computation time in this configuration of the order of few ms.