Comparison of SCA-Optimized PID and P&O-based MPPT for an off-grid fuel cell system

Abstract

This paper presents a simulation and modelling of a fuel cell system to extract maximum power from an array for an off-grid stand-alone system. A stand-alone system consists of fuel cell stack/array, DC–DC boost converter and a load. A DC–DC boost converter is needed to boost the voltage as per the requirement or application. Sine Cosine Algorithm is adopted to enhance the output of the system and to find out the controller gain parameters. SCA-optimized PID-based MPPT controller is validated over conventional P&O-based MPPT scheme, to regulate the pulse width of the DC–DC boost converter to enhance the output power, voltage and current. The gain parameters of the PID controller are tuned/selected in such that it gives best result, since gain parameters highly influence the system performance. The model is simulated in MATLAB 2015a, and the obtained result is validated that the SCA-optimized PID controller is better than the conventional P&O based MPPT.