A Comprehensive Review on Maximum Power Point Tracking Algorithms for Photovoltaic Cells

In the world's current energy scenario, it has become glaringly obvious that we should depend on alternative sources of energy. The most common and abundant of these renewable sources is solar energy. The primary issue with large scale dependency on solar energy is the low efficiency of present day solar cells and the weather around solar power installations. This brings us to the topic of this paper, Maximum power point tracking or MPPT. The maximum power point on the I-V characteristics of a solar cell fluctuates relentlessly due to a multitude of factors including variation in solar radiation, the temperature of the PV cell, the current/power-voltage characteristics under varied temperature and the load connected to the PV cell. For maximizing the output of the cell, the maximum power point must be constantly tracked. Hence the reason why most solar power electronic converters have controllers that utilize some form of maximum power point tracking (MPPT). In the span of the last few years, numerous MPPT techniques have been published. But the techniques that were found to be most fitting for various ranges of PV application are perturb and observe (P&O), and Incremental conductance (IC).