Excess PV dumping resistor at the DC side of grid tied inverters
Alex Van den Bossche(1), Kamran Hafeez(2)   1. Electrical Energy Laboratory, Ghent University EELAB UGENT. Technologiepark 131, 9052 Ghent Belgium 2. Electrical Engineering Department COMSATS University Islamabad Pakistan 2025-07-25

Abstract

The tendency today is oversizing the PV peak power compared to the inverter power. It makes sense in northern cloudy countries, but the question arises if something can be done with the excess power, mainly in summer? The harvesting of unused power can be made at low cost by using a dump resistor. It results in another type of “PV characteristic”, where the current gets lower at higher voltage, but it remains stable. A possible application is weed killing by hot water and to replace chemicals as glyphosate. The proposed method is tested with a Perturb and Observe (P&O) MPPT algorithm to verify the results using MATLAB.

Key words: DC-AC converter, Excess PV, Glyphosate, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), Photovoltaic.

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