A Comparison of Perturb and Observe and fuzzy-logic based MPPT methods for uniform environment conditions

Abstract

The power generation from photovoltaic (PV) system is not constant and it varies based on solar irradiance and temperature. For any environmental condition, to convert maximum available solar energy, PV systems must be operated at maximum power point. To accomplish that two different maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methods have been presented in this study. The first method can determine MPP point by measuring the derivative of PV cell power (dP) and PV cell voltage (dV) which is called Perturb & Observe (P & O) method. The second method uses fuzzy-logic-control (FLC) based MPPT method to determine MPP point for actual environment conditions. In this paper, 3kW PV system model is studied in MATLAB. According to the simulated results, FLC based MPPT method has better performance than P & O method. Compared to the P & O method, FLC-based MPPT can increase tracking accuracy and efficiency performance 0.13% under standard test conditions (STC).