A faster maximum power point tracker using peak current control

This paper focuses on alternatives for implementing variable size perturbations in peak current controlled perturbation and observation (P&O) maximum power point trackers (MPPT). Implementations of P&O algorithms based on peak current control and on instantaneous sampled values have shown to provide very fast transients and small oscillations around the maximum power point (MPP). However, operation with fixed variation of the reference current results in a tradeoff between speed of response and maximum power yield in the steady state. Variable variation of the reference current can be successfully done with fuzzy logic. This paper discusses a fuzzy logic based P&O MPPT with peak current control with variable variation of the reference current for improved transient as well as steady-state performance. The fuzzy logic based scheme presents a faster rise time of 0.27 ms as compared to 0.32 ms for the standard scheme with fixed ¿I_REF. Simulation results show a 15% gain in the transient response and decrease of the power loss in the steady state.