Optimizing the Efficiency of the PV System using MPPT Technology based on the Modified IC Algorithm

The significant growth in the use of renewable energy, especially solar energy, due to its abundance, low installation and maintenance costs, and the shortage of fossil fuels made it the focus of researchers’ attention to address the main problem it suffers from, which is its low efficiency due to the change in its energy production with changing weather conditions (change in radiation intensity and temperature). MPPT technology is one of the most important technologies used to increase and improve the efficiency of photovoltaic systems by controlling the system to always operate at the maximum power point to extract the maximum energy generated from solar panels in various test conditions. In this paper, the photovoltaic (PV) system is simulated using a MATLAB/Simulink environment where the system consists of a solar panel array and a DC-DC converter with MPPT technology based on two traditional algorithms modified to track the maximum power under different test conditions. We have also employed a modified Perturb and Observes (P&O) algorithm beside a modified Incremental Conductance (IC) algorithm. Through the simulation results, the performance of the two mentioned algorithms was compared in terms of MPP tracking speed and also reducing the amount of fluctuation around it.