Performance Analysis of Perturb and Observe, Incremental Conductance and Robust Sliding Mode MPPT Controllers for a 500KW PV Based Microgrid Using Actual Solar Irradiance Data

The World is moving towards an era where electricity generation is highly depending on renewable energy resources. The popularity of Microgrid for future grid system to meet consumer demand increased interest of scientists and researchers towards renewable i.e. mostly towards Photovoltaic System for past few decades. But unfortunately PV System has nonlinear characteristic and its performance highly depends upon temperature and solar irradiance, therefore Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) Controller is required to cater this issue. A robust control technique, namely Sliding Mode Control is proposed so that the Photovoltaic panel of Microgrid can be efficiently operated at its peak power in the presence of parametric variations and dynamic atmospheric conditions. Here we intend to examine other traditional MPPT controllers i.e. P&O and IC as well along with proposed controller. The efficacy of the proposed scheme is verified by Modelling and Simulation of 500KW PV Based Microgrid in Matlab / Simulink platform on real time irradiance data of Port Qasim, Karachi, to effectively address standard test condition as well as real time environmental conditions. Comparative analysis shows that proposed SMC MPPT control improves the overall PV based Microgrid performance.