Artificial Neural Network for Control of Solar Photovoltaic System

Abstract

The generation of energy from renewable sources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) systems has grown at an exponential rate over the last decade. In this context, PV power plants require increasingly efficient and intelligent control strategies to ensure reliable operation and high energy availability. Among the various Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) has received enormous interest nowadays in control of solar PV systems since they are easy to use and implement. With a good amount of data for processing, ANNs are able to provide a fast and accurate tracking of the Maximum Power Point (MPP) in solar PV systems. To address the challenges due to the integration of uncertain and variable solar energy into power systems, ANNs are also applied to solar generation or irradiance forecasting. This chapter presents an overview of ANN developments and highlights the application of ANNs in solar PV systems for control purposes.