Maximum power point tracking techniques using improved incremental conductance and particle swarm optimizer for solar power generation systems

Abstract The generation of power from solar energy by using Photovoltaic (PV) systems to convert the irradiation of the sun into electricity has been adopted over the past years. However, the PV system’s P–V and I–V characteristics become unstable when solar irradiation and temperature change. In this paper, the incremental conductance (INC) has been improved using signals to measure the current and voltage from the PV systems directly which quickly changes with the environmental conditions, and the conventional particle swarm optimization (PSO) is modified so that under multiple shaded peak PV array curves with fast-changing solar irradiance and temperature, more power is extracted at a faster rate without any tracking failure at high-speed tracking of both individual maximum power point (IMPP) and global maximum power point (GMPP) under varying solar irradiance and temperature at a longer distance to enhance the power generated. The individual and global coefficients are also improved to change with multiple shaded peak PV array curves with fast-changing solar irradiance and temperature. DC-DC converter converts DC power from one circuit to another and DC-AC inverter converts DC power to AC power. Simulation was carried out in MATLAB Simulink with different solar irradiance and temperature whereby the conventional INC and PSO were compared with the proposed INC and PSO. An experiment was carried out for a whole day from 8 am to 5 pm to test the validity of the proposed algorithm and compared it with the conventional INC and PSO by using the solar irradiance and temperature received. From both the simulation and experimental results, the proposed INC and PSO performed better by attaining high power and tracking speed with stable output results than the conventional INC and PSO.