Fraction Open Circuit and Fractional Short Circuit Based Incremental Conductance Maximum Power Point Tracking Controller

Abstract

The intermittent nature of the supply source and the inherent characteristics of the conversion device pose greater challenges in the efficient utilization of solar PV systems. Rapid and robust controllers are thus essential for maximum power conversion of solar power available for harnessing. An enhanced Incremental Conductance (InC) based maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller is introduced in this paper. The novelty of the proposed controller lies in the use of Fractional Open Circuit (FOC) combined with Fractional Short Circuit (FSC) principles to create a defined search range for InC controller. This has shown to reduce the response to 0.25 ms, allowing for rapid response. Comparative analysis with an adoptive Perturb and Observe MMPT has shown an improvement in response time by 483%. Further addition of fuzzy logic control allows for a more robust control with a settling time of 0.72 ms and overshoot of 0.57 V, improved by 330% and 57.8%, respectively. MATLAB/Simulink simulation of the proposed methods and analysis of the findings are presented in this paper.