variable step-size hill-climbing search (vs-hcs) mppt algorithm for hydrokinetic energy harnessing

Hydrokinetic energy harnessing has emerged as a promising renewable energy that utilizes the kinetic energy of moving water to generate electricity. nevertheless, the variation and fluctuation of water velocity and turbulence flow in a river is a challenging issue, especially in designing a control system that can harness the maximum output power with high efficiency. besides, the conventional hill-climbing search (hcs) mppt algorithm has weaknesses, such as slow tracking time and producing high steady-state oscillation, which reduces efficiency. in this paper, the variable-step hill climbing search (vs-hcs) mppt algorithm is proposed to solve the limitation of the conventional hcs mppt. the model of hydrokinetic energy harnessing is developed using matlab/simulink. the system consists of a water turbine, permanent magnet synchronous generator (pmsg), passive rectifier, and dc-dc boost converter. the results show that the power output achieves a 28 % increase over the system without mppt and exhibits the lowest energy losses with a loss percentage of 0.9 %.