Investigation of the double input power converter with N stages of voltage multiplier using PSO‐based MPPT technique for the thermoelectric energy harvesting system

Summary This research work presents a thermoelectric energy harvesting system comprises of a double input DC‐DC converter with maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique under varying temperature conditions (VTCs). The converter has two inputs with N stages of diode‐capacitor to boost the output voltage. It has the advantages of higher voltage gain and flexibility of power‐sharing by both the independent sources. The perturb and observe (P&O)‐based MPPT algorithm is an efficient and simple method to track the maximum power. However, the power‐current (P‐I) characteristics of the thermoelectric modules exhibit multiple peaks at VTCs; it fails to identify the global peak point (GPP) and gets track the local peak point. To overcome the drawback of the P&O technique, a particle swarm optimization (PSO)‐based MPPT technique is implemented to track the GPP. A comparison is performed between the P&O and PSO technique in terms of MPPT tracking efficiency and oscillation around the maximum power point. From the acquired results of simulation and experiment, it is recommended that the PSO‐based MPPT technique has furnished better overall performance. Thermoelectric energy harvesting system comprises of a double input DC‐DC converter with MPPT technique under VTCs. The proposed converter has a higher voltage gain and flexibility of power‐sharing by the sources. P‐I characteristics of the thermoelectric modules exhibit multiple peaks at VTCs, the P&O based MPPT algorithm fails to identify the GPP and track the local peak point. A PSO based MPPT technique is implemented to track the GPP effectively.