Comparative analysis of MPPT techniques for PV in domestic applications

Renewable energy systems are becoming an important part of world's energy. In the view of green house gas emissions and various adverse effects of other energy sources, solar photovoltaic (PV) energy has proven its importance amongst various other renewable energy sources. But the characteristics of PV array are non linear and time varying, thus the power generated changes continuously with atmospheric conditions. Thus maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithms are required for extraction of effective energy from PV array. This paper focuses on an investigation of various MPPT algorithms namely Perturb and Observe (P&O), Incremental Conductance (IC), Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), for PV array installed for domestic application in stand-alone mode. These algorithms are compared on the basis of the tracking time, irradiance variation and operating point operations. The paper thus presents advantages, disadvantages and characteristics of different MPPT algorithms for PV array for domestic applications.