A regulated incremental conductance (r-INC) MPPT algorithm for photovoltaic system

Maximum power point tracking techniques play an important role in improving the efficiency of photovoltaic generation system. Among various schemes, the incremental conductance (INC) method is mostly discussed in literature because of its superb tracking ability in irradiance and temperature changes. However, because the conventional INC algorithms adopt a simple duty-cycle updating law that is mainly based on the polarity information of the peak-power evaluation function, it is not possible to maximize the performance in transient as well as steady-state conditions. In order to mitigate above limitations, this paper proposes a novel regulated INC (r-INC) method. Just as a compensator in an automatic control system, it applies a digital filtering to the evaluation function and enhances the power tracking capability. Mathematical modeling of the new MPPT system also has been presented to aid the optimized design process. Comparative test results with a 120W boost peak power tracker verify the superiority of the proposed method over the conventional ones.