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The thesis is concerned with a small-scale compressed air energy storage (SS-CAES) system. Although these systems have relatively low energy density, they offer advantages of low environmental impact and ease of maintenance.The thesis focuses on solving a number of commonly known problems related to the perturb and observe (P&O) maximum power point tracking (MPPT) system for SS-CAES, including confusion under input power fluctuation conditions and operating point dither.A test rig was designed and built to be used for validation of the theoretical work. The rig comprised an air motor driving a permanent magnet DC generator whose power output is controlled by a buck converter. A speed control system was designed and implemented using a dSPACE controller. This enabled fast convergence of MPPT.Four MPPT systems were investigated. In the first system, the air motor characteristics were used to determine the operating speed corresponding to MPP for a given pressure. This was compared to a maximum efficiency point tracking (MEPT) system. Operating at the maximum power point resulted in 1% loss of efficiency compared to operating at the maximum efficiency point. But MPPT does not require an accurate model of the system that is needed for MEPT, which also requires more sensors.The second system that was investigated uses a hybrid MPPT approach that did not require a prior knowledge system model. It used the rate of change of power output with respect to the duty cycle of the buck converter as well as the change in duty cycle to avoid confusion under input power fluctuations. It also used a fine speed step in the vicinity of the MPP and a coarse speed step when the operating point was far from the MPP. Both simulation and experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of this proposed system. The third P&O MPPT system used a fuzzy logic approach which avoided confusion and eliminated operating point dither. This system was also implemented experimentally.A speed control system improved the controllable speed-range by using a buck-boost converter instead. The last MPPT system employed a hybrid P&O and incremental inductance (INC) approach to avoid confusion and eliminate operating point dither. The simulation results validate the design.Although the focus of the work is on SS-CAES, the results are generic in nature and could be applied to MPPT of other systems such as PV and wind turbine.

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