Ripple Correlation Control Maximum Power Point Tracking for Battery Operated PV Systems: A Comparative analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of Ripple Correlation Control (RCC) with conventional Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) methods such as Perturb & Observe (P&O) and Incremental Conductance (IC). Photovoltaic (PV) array along with the buck converter and its MPPT control have been simulated for all three MPPT methods at different solar radiation levels. From the simulation results, it can be observed that P&O is much affected with slow tracking and oscillations, and IC MPPT performs better than P&O in terms of tracking, but not for ripples. Simulation results verifies that RCC MPPT is capable of solving both these problems effectively and RCC performance is better than both P&O and IC MPPT methods.