Application of Type 2 fuzzy for maximum power point tracker for photovoltaic system

Abstract

Photovoltaic systems (PV) are becoming more popular as a way to make electricity because they offer so many benefits, such as free solar irradiation to harvest and low maintenance costs. Moreover, the system is environmentally friendly because it neither emits noxious gases nor generates environmental noise. Consequently, during the operation of a PV system, the working environment is free of all types of pollution. Despite the aforementioned advantages, a photovoltaic (PV) system’s performance is significantly impacted by the fluctuation in electrical charges from the panel, such as shading conditions (PSC), weather conditions, and others, which significantly lowers the system’s efficiency. To operate the PV modules at their peak power, maximum-power point tracking (MPPT) is employed. As a result of the various peaks present during fluctuating irradiance, the P-V curves become complex. Traditional methods, such as Perturb and Observe (P and O) have also failed to monitor the Global Maximum Power Point (GMPP), therefore they usually live in the Local Maximum Power Point (LMPP), which drastically lowers the efficiency of the PV systems. This study compares type 2 fuzzy logic (T2-FLC) with the traditional Perturb and Observe Method (P and O) in three different scenarios of irradiance, temperature, and environmental factors, in order to track the maximum power point of photovoltaics. Type 1 fuzzy logic (T1-FLC) is not appropriate for systems with a high level of uncertainty (complex and non-linear systems). By modelling the vagueness and unreliability of information, type 2 fuzzy logic is better equipped to deal with linguistic uncertainties, thereby reducing the ambiguity in a system. The result for three conditions in terms of four variables; efficiency, settling time, tracking time, and overshoot, proves that this strategy offers high efficiency, dependability, and resilience. The performance of the proposed algorithm is further validated and compared to the other three tracking techniques, which include the Perturb and Observe methods (P and O). The particle swarm algorithm (PSO) and incremental conductance method results show that type 2 fuzzy (IT2FLC) is better than the three methods mentioned above.