An Improved Cuckoo Search Algorithm for Maximum Power Point Tracking of Photovoltaic Systems under Partial Shading Conditions

Ali M Eltamaly

doi:10.3390/en14040953

Abstract

The problem of partial shading has serious effects on the performance of photovoltaic (PV) systems. Adding a bypass diode in shunt to each PV module avoids hot-spot phenomena, but causes multi-peaks in the power–voltage (P–V) characteristics of the PV array, which cause traditional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques to become trapped in local peaks. This problem has forced researchers to search for smart techniques to track global peaks and prevent the possibility of convergence at local peaks. Swarm optimization techniques have been used to fill this shortcoming; unfortunately, however, these techniques suffer from unacceptably long convergence time. Cuckoo search (CS) is one of the fastest and most reliable optimization techniques, making it an ideal option to be used as an MPPT of PV systems under dynamic partial shading conditions. The standard CS algorithm has a long conversion time, high failure rate, and high oscillations at steady state; this paper aims to overcome these problems and to fill this research gap by improving the performance of the CS. The results obtained from this technique are compared to five swarm optimization techniques. The comparison study shows the superiority of the improved CS strategy introduced in this paper over the other swarm optimization techniques.

Highlights

IntroductionEspecially PV, are attracting more interest in recent decades due to their abundant and environmentally-friendly nature
Renewable energy systems, especially PV, are attracting more interest in recent decades due to their abundant and environmentally-friendly nature
The results obtained from the simulation and experimental work of this paper showed the superiority of the improved CS (ICS) strategy compared to the other optimization strategies in terms of failure rate, convergence time, and the steady-state oscillations

Summary

Introduction

Especially PV, are attracting more interest in recent decades due to their abundant and environmentally-friendly nature. Due to the nonlinear relation between the P–V characteristics, a circuit is required to force the PV array to work at the terminal voltage associated with the maximum power This can be accomplished using a DC-DC converter operated according to a control technique called maximum power point tracking (MPPT). All the challenges and efforts introduced in the literature are toward either reducing convergence time, failure rate, steady-state voltage, and power oscillations, or maintaining the simplicity of the code and the calculations required to reduce the cost of the hardware controller. For this reason, many improvements have been introduced to the standard SOT to reduce these issues–this is the main motivation of the present study. The main shortcoming of this technique is the high oscillations in the voltage and power from the PV array, as these may cause many disturbances of the PV system, greatly reducing the amount of energy generated

Objectives

Results

Conclusion