Comparison of Three-Point P&O and Hill Climbing Methods for Maximum Power Point Tracking in PV Systems

Solar energy and photovoltaic (PV) systems will play an important role in the future production market. One of the challenges in optimal operation of solar PV systems is the low efficiency of these systems compared to fossil fuel production units. The reason is the sudden changes in climate factors, including the temperature and intensity of radiation in the environment. One of the solutions used to solve the low power efficiency problem in PV systems is the MPPT techniques which have been widely investigated by many researchers. In this paper, a new form of conventional Perturb and Observe (P&O) method named three-point P&O is introduced and compared with Hill Climbing (HC) method under constant and variable atmospheric conditions. The DC-DC converter is Boost which has an acceptable performance in solar applications. The simulation results in MATLAB and experimental results indicate a better performance of three-point P&O method in terms of output power fluctuations and maximum power point tracking capability.