Maximum power point performance tracking comparison between incremental conductance with perturb and observe algorithms in photovoltaic power systems

Electric power from solar energy technologies is gaining great and important uses because of cleanness, free, no noise and little maintenance. Their characteristic output power depends on fluctuating climatic conditions like temperature, cloud cover, and irradiance. Since climate is not always uniform, maximum power point tracking techniques are used in solar power systems to extract maximum power from photovoltaic systems. In this paper, voltage and current data from a 50 W stand-alone photovoltaic module located in Rwamagana district, Rwanda were recorded and used to compare the performance between incremental conductance algorithm with perturb and observe algorithm for maximum power point tracking. The maximum power point of 12.044 W was achieved at 15 hours for the incremental conductance algorithm. Both I-V and P-V characteristics of PV system show n-shaped nonlinear conductance and n-shaped nonlinear current characteristic curves. An equation was developed for the dissipative saw-tooth wave irradiance characteristic curve, at fairly constant temperatures, in the study.