A Novel MPPT Technique Based on Combination between the Incremental Conductance and Hysteresis Control Applied in a Standalone PV System

Abstract

A new Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) method, consisting in combining the Incremental Conductance (INC) algorithm with the Hysteresis control, was developed and applied to a standalone photovoltaic (PV) system to generate the maximum power of the PV array. The INC allows one to search for the Maximum Power Point (MPP). The hysteresis improves the accuracy of tracking the MPP very fast even after severe changes in weather conditions and has no oscillations around the MPP. The five-level S-Packed U Cells (SPUC5) inverter is used to transform the produced DC voltage to AC voltage; it generates five-level output voltage with a small number of switches and only DC source voltage. The capacitors of the SPUC5 are controlled by the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) in order to balance their voltages. The proposed PV system was established and trained in the MATLAB/Simulink environment under various irradiation conditions. A comparison between different MPPT methods, INC-PWM and INC-PI, was investigated in order to examine the effectiveness of the developed MPPT technique in particular, and of all the PV system components. The results of the simulation validate the effectiveness of the suggested MPPT algorithm as well as the used SPUC5 inverter.