Comparative Study of P&O and PSO Particle Swarm Optimization MPPT Controllers for Photovoltaic Systems

The performance of a photovoltaic system is strongly affected by the environmental conditions which it is subjected such as random atmospheric variations. In order to improve the performance of a photovoltaic system, the work of this paper is devoted to the comparative study between the following MPPT algorithms: the perturbation and observation algorithm (P&O) and the particle swarm optimization algorithm PSO. These two algorithms are tested under various atmospheric conditions and evaluated in terms of efficiency, stability, speed, and robustness. The obtained simulation results show the effectiveness of the PSO than the P&O algorithm.