Maximum power point tracking systems in solar cells

The solar energy is one of the most important alternative energy sources. The recent scientific studies has shown that significant progress has been done on the efficient use of the solar energy. However, as in all scientific matters related to this issue, there are still some problems to be solved. One of these problems is to maximize the use of power obtained from the solar cell.In this study, three different methods were used in order to track the maximum power point of the solar cell. These are, connecting the solar cell directly to the load, perturbing&observing and fractional open circuit voltage, respectively.These three methods were compared using different temperature and radiation levels and it was observed that perturb&observe is the best method to track the maximum power point.Java programming language were used in the simulation program and Eclipse IDE was choosen as the development environment.