Novel Incremental Conductance Feedback Method with Integral Compensator for Maximum Power Point Tracking: A Comparison Using Hardware in the Loop

Abstract

Research on renewable energy sources and power electronic converters has been increasing due to environmental concerns. Many countries have established targets to decrease CO2 emissions and boost the proportion of renewable energy, with solar power being a prominent area of investigation in the recent literature. Techniques are being developed to optimize the energy recovered from PV cells and increase system efficiency, including modeling PV cells, the use of converter topologies to connect PV systems to high-power inverters, and the use of MPPT methods. Certain MPPT algorithms are intricate and demand high processing power. The literature describes several MPPT methods; however, the number of hardware resources required by MPPT algorithms is typically not disclosed. This work proposes a novel MPPT technique based on integral feedback conductance and incremental conductance error, considering the current dynamics of the boost converter. This MPPT algorithm is compared to the most widely used techniques in the literature and evaluates each method’s efficiency, performance, and computational needs using an HIL system. Comparisons are made with well-known MPPT algorithms, such as perturb and observe, incremental conductance, and newer techniques based on fuzzy logic and neural networks (NNs). As the NN that is most widely used in the literature depends on irradiation and temperature, an additional NN that is trained using the proposed method is also investigated.