Maximum Power Point Tracking Based Hybrid Hill-climb Search Method Applied to Wind Energy Conversion System

Abstract Due to the instantaneous variation of wind speed, it is suitable to determine the optimal rotational speed that ensures maximum energy efficiency. This article deals with a comparison between different maximum power point tracking algorithms applied to wind energy conversion systems. The most commonly used algorithms are optimal torque control, power signal feedback, tip-speed ratio, and hill-climb search. The conventional hill-climb search method has an important drawback, which is the wrong directionality under rapid wind change. To solve this problem, using a hybrid hill-climb search method is proposed, which consists of combining the optimal torque control and hill-climb search methods. The proposed approach is applied to a wind energy conversion system based on a permanent magnet synchronous generator under a wind speed profile using a MATLAB®-Simulink® (The MathWorks, Natick, Massachusetts, USA) package to achieve the simulation calculations. The obtained results are then presented and compared to those given by classical algorithms to highlight the interest of the proposed approach in terms of efficiency and response speed.