Comparitive study of P&O and incremental conductance method for PV system

The intension of this paper is to focus on efficient and optimized Photovoltaic system to obtain maximum power using power electronic devices. In general, Photovoltaic panel very rarely operates at maximum power point which results in poor efficiency. Optimization of Photovoltaic system is performed by using Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm for better efficiency. Generally, in MPPT, Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm is amply adopted. Though it tracks the peak power point accurately at constant irradiance and temperature it has some demerits like slow response and oscillations at different atmospheric conditions. To overcome this intricacy incremental conductance algorithm is preferred. The simulation is done to find out Current Voltage (I-V) and Power voltage(P-V) curves of PV module and PV panel under varying atmospheric conditions. The performances such as oscillations, tracking capability are compared for both incremental conductance algorithm and traditional P and O algorithm and superiority of incremental conductance over conventional Perturb and Observe MPPT algorithm are evaluated using the MATLAB/SIMULINK software.