Comparative Study of IC and P&O MPPT Techniques for Fuel Cell System Control

This paper presents a fuel cell system simulation with the implementation of two MPPT techniques: Incremental Conductance (IC) and perturb-and-observe (P&O). Output voltage regulation power maximization from the fuel cell was achieved through a boost converter in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. The dynamic response, tracking efficiency, and stability comparison of both MPPT algorithms are presented. In addition, the effects of pressure and temperature variations on the algorithm performance were studied to check the robustness under different operating conditions. The results obtained from the simulation illuminate the advantages and disadvantages attributed to each of the methods, suggesting an optimal MPPT method applicable to Fuel Cell Systems.