A sensor-less control and optimal energy management algorithm for a stand-alone photovoltaic system considering partial shading condition

Abstract

One of the most important part of a stand-alone photovoltaic system is energy management. This part uses several sensors to measure solar radiations, load power and battery energy to determine operation of the system components. Reduction the number of sensors and optimization of energy management system are two key steps to improve the efficiency and reliability of the system without additional cost. Hence, in this paper, a comprehensive energy management algorithm along with a complementary algorithm to estimate radiation under uniform and partial shading conditions is proposed. According to the system state, the energy management algorithm commands to activate/ deactivate a part or entire of photovoltaic system which can increase the system lifetime and thus increase the system reliability. Another feature of the proposed algorithm is a new mode in the absence of radiation for parallelizing and sharing the battery’s current to the load by unidirectional and bidirectional converters. Furthermore, a sensor-less complementary algorithm to determine the amount of radiation and also the partial shading condition is proposed. To prove the feasibility of the proposed algorithms, the system was simulated and constructed. The simulation and experimental results are found closely comparable and confirm the effectiveness of the proposed methods.