A survey of the most used MPPT methods: Conventional and advanced algorithms applied for photovoltaic systems

Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) methods are used in photovoltaic (PV) systems to continually maximize the PV array output power which generally depends on solar radiation and cell temperature. MPPT methods can be roughly classified into two categories: there are conventional methods, like the Perturbation and Observation (P&O) method and the Incremental Conductance (IncCond) method and advanced methods, such as, fuzzy logic (FL) based MPPT method. This paper presents a survey of these methods in order to analyze, simulate, and evaluate a PV power supply system under varying meteorological conditions. Simulation results, obtained using MATLAB/Simulink, show that static and dynamic performances of fuzzy MPPT controller are better than those of conventional techniques based controller. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.