Maximum Power Harvesting using Fuzzy Logic MPPT Controller

Abstract

Production of energy and its usage per capita is considered as indicators that depict the living standards of a nation. The economic growth of a country is directly dependent on the availability of energy resources. To create a balance between energy demand and available energy resources, renewable resources are being in much focused these days. The most important renewable energy resources include solar, wind, geothermal and biogas, etc. Solar energy is one of the most important resources of renewable energy, used to convert light energy directly into electrical energy. Maximum power extraction is a major problem associated with Photovoltaic (PV) power systems. Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is required to improve the energy conversion efficiency of, Photovoltaic power system. The MPPT is a dynamic process of getting the optimal output power from solar PV Arrays under different irradiation levels and temperature change. The performance of an MPPT Controller is dependent on the fact that how rapidly it can attain the Maximum Power Point (MPP) and stability of output. Previously Different MPPT Controllers have been designed to extract maximum power from PV modules under changing weather conditions. To overcome the limitations of previous methods, an intelligent method based on fuzzy logic is proposed for maximum power point tracking. To analyze the performance of fuzzy logic based MPPT controller a PV System is designed in MATLAB/SIMULINK. The resulted Simulations show that the proposed system has a fast response and good performance characteristics. It can improve the efficiency of PV array improves effectively against change in irradiation and temperature.