Implementation and Analysis of Grey Wolf Optimization Technique for PV Fed Switched Coupled Inductor Quasi Z-Source Cascaded Multilevel Inverter

Abstract

A new type of photovoltaic (PV) fed cascaded multilevel topology is proposed in this work. The proposed topology is an integration of Switched Coupled Inductor (SCL) quasi Z-Source network (qZS) to Cascaded Multilevel Inverter (CMI). In order to extract maximum power with high tracking efficiency under various conditions from the PV system, Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm is implemented in the proposed topology. The main aspect of GWO is to control the duty cycle through iterations for better performance. The GWO has the potential to achieve global peak under any climatic conditions. The iterations are done in three steps mainly hunting, encircling for prey and, attacking prey. To prove the effectiveness of GWO, its performance is compared with traditional Perturb & Observe (P & O) MPPT technique. The proposed technique is implemented, tested for various Partial Shading Conditions (PSC) using MATLAB/ Simulink results are verified with experimental set up of 1 kW by utilizing My-RIO embedded FPGA processor board.