A Review of Maximum Power Point Tracking Algorithm for Solar Photovoltaic Applications

The world’s large dependency on conventional energy sources has not only posed a threat to the environment but also they are non-renewable. Therefore, a huge interest is put upon renewable sources of energy. Amongst them, solar technology has become a rapid growing industry for power generation. This paper briefly reviews the technological challenges of maximum power point (MPP) tracking of photovoltaic (PV) energy obtained from solar cells. The paper describes the evolution of several MPP techniques that are popular commercially and presents their basic working, utilisation ability in different scenarios, cost of implementation and new research performed to find better techniques. The study also includes incorporation of soft computing in solar MPP tracking. It is observed that, the MPP tracking techniques are rapidly evolving from simple to complex methods, as per the demands dictates. The simpler methods like perturb and observe are cost effective and have simpler design, but are highly inefficient in terms of efficiencies under drastically changing environment. They find application in streetlights and solar lanterns. The incorporation of soft computing methods like ANNs, FLCs, can drastically increase efficiency, but are cost ineffective. Such techniques find place where efficiency matters the most. In large PV plants, these systems prove to be highly efficient.