FPGA-Based implementation of IncCond algorithm for photovoltaic applications

Recent advances in control algorithms embedded into a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) allowed the application of such algorithms in real engineering problems (robotic, image and signal processing, control, power electronics, etc.), however, the application of such technologies in the solar energy field is very limited. The embedded advanced algorithm into FPGA can play a very important role in renewable energy systems for control, monitoring, supervision, etc. FPGA technology was employed due to its development, flexibility and low cost. In this paper, the incremental conductance (IncCond) algorithm is implemented on FPGA for tracking the Maximum Power Point (MPP) of a photovoltaic (PV) array. The IncCond algorithm has been designed using a description language (VHSIC standing for very-high-speed integrated circuits) then implemented on Xilinx Virtex-II-Pro(xc2v1000-4fg456. Modelsim-based simulation results confirm the good tracking efficiency (96%) and rapid response time (2ms). It has been confirmed that the implemented algorithm performs better than the well known Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm.