Abstract
Partially shaded photovoltaic (PV) modules have multiple peaks in the power-voltage(P-V)characteristic curve and conventional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm, such as perturbation and observation (P&O), which is unable to track the global maximum power point (GMPP) accurately due to its localized search space. Therefore, this paper proposes a differential evolution (DE) based optimization algorithm to provide the globalized search space to track the GMPP. The direction of mutation in the DE algorithm is modified to ensure that the mutation always converges to the best solution among all the particles in the generation. This helps to provide the rapid convergence of the algorithm. Simulation of the proposed PV system is carried out in PSIM and the results are compared to P&O algorithm. In the hardware implementation, a high step-up DC-DC converter is employed to verify the proposed algorithm experimentally on partial shading conditions, load variation, and solar intensity variation. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is able to converge to the GMPP within 1.2 seconds with higher efficiency than P&O.
Highlights
The demand on photovoltaic (PV) system has increased due to the abundance of raw materials as well as its noiseless and environment friendly power-generating process [1,2,3]
There are numbers of researches on the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm such as fractional open circuit voltage [4, 5], fractional short circuit voltage [4], incremental conductance (Inc Cond) algorithm [5,6,7,8,9], fuzzy logic [10], perturbation and observation (P&O) [11,12,13], and neural network [14]. These algorithms are only proven in tracking the maximum power point (MPP) under uniform insolation where there is only single MPP that exists in the power against voltage (P-V) curve
The sampling time of the MPPT controller is set to 0.05 s and the Maximum power (Pmax) Voltage at MPP (Vmpp) Current at MPP (Impp) Open circuit voltage (Voc) Short circuit current (Isc) Number of series cells
Summary
The demand on photovoltaic (PV) system has increased due to the abundance of raw materials as well as its noiseless and environment friendly power-generating process [1,2,3]. A PV array consists of numbers of PV modules and if some of the PV modules are partially shaded, the P-V curve consists of more than one peak [15] Under this circumstance, the conventional algorithm aforementioned may fail to track the global MPP (GMPP) and the efficiency of the PV system decreases [16]. In order to ensure that the MPPT algorithm is able to function accurately even under partial shading conditions, [17] has modified the conventional incremental conductance (Inc Cond) algorithm by introducing a simple linear equation to track the GMPP, but there are additional measurement circuits at the output of the converter.
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