Comparative study of incremental conductance and perturb & observe MPPT methods for photovoltaic system

Abstract

The connection between a photovoltaic generator (GPV) and a continuous type load is still a subject of study. This connection uses an adaptation stage acting as an interface between the GPV and the load. The adaptation stage is usually composed of a DC-DC converter monitored by a controller of the maximum power point MPPT (maximum power point tracking). The aim of this work is to realize a study and comparison between two methods of MPPT: the Incremental conductance (Inc-cond) method and the perturbation & observation method (P & O). For this we devoted a part of the work to the study of the components constituting the global photovoltaic system namely: the photovoltaic module, the DC-DC converter, and the MPPT controller. The second step is reserved to comparison between MPPT methods-both designed in the MATLAB / SIMULINK environment-performed by simulation. The comparison results demonstrated good performance of the Incremental Conductance method compared to the Perturbe & Observe method.