A Comparative Study of Maximum Power Point Tracking Techniques for Solar Systems

The solar power is getting attention globally because of being clean and renewable in nature. However, the power extraction limit from solar cell depends on the solar irradiance and temperature. The solar radiation keeps varying the whole day and thus making the solar power generation fluctuating in nature. Resultingly, the solar energy from the solar panel is always less than the maximum possible generation limit of the solar panel. The solution to this problem is the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm, enabling maximum power extraction from the solar panel. This work presents a comparative study of various MPPT techniques under constant and varying irradiance conditions. This work shows the solar MPPT control by perturbation and observes (P&O), incremental conductivity (IC) and Gaussian and triangular fuzzy logic controller (FLC) techniques. The efficiency comparison for MPPT by these techniques has also been presented in this work. The evaluation of performance for these techniques has been performed to determine the best possible technique for MPPT. The comparative study shows that the triangle-based FLC is superior to the other FLC technology and remaining conventional technologies for MPPT.