Experimental Investigation of Incremental Conductance-based MPPT for PV Arrays

Abstract

Renewable energy has become increasingly important in recent times and the most abundant source of clean energy that people are migrating to is sunlight energy. To harness this energy, photovoltaic panels are deployed to convert solar energy into electrical energy. As a result, the PV arrays used are subjected to changing irradiance and temperature throughout the day. Similarly, the efficiency of the resultant power is significantly reduced if no control method is used to track the MPP at any given time. This paper presents an experimental investigation of an Incremental Conductance-based MPPT for PV arrays. The simulation and experimental data are processed, analyzed, and compared. From this comparison, a generalized observation emerges that the Incremental conductance algorithm improves the overall efficiency of the power system.