Maximum Power Point Tracking Method for Photovoltaic System Based on Enhanced Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm Under Partial Shading Condition

Abstract

The maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is an essential key to ensure that the photovoltaic (PV) system is operated at the highest possible power generation. This paper presents an efficient MPPT method for the PV system based on an enhanced particle swarm optimization algorithm to track the location of the global maximum power point, whatever its location changes in the search space under all environmental conditions, including the partial shading on strings. In this paper, the formulation of the conventional particle swarm optimization algorithm is enhanced to decrease the searching time and the oscillation of the generated output power as well as the power losses in the online tracking process. This enhancement can be achieved by utilizing a special time-varying weighting coefficient and removing the effect of some other coefficients in the conventional particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) that cause winding of the particles during the online tracking process. Test results verified the accuracy of the proposed method to track the global maximum power point with considering the effect of partial shading condition. The proposed method was also compared with other MPPT methods to verify the superiority of the proposed work. The obtained results reveal that the proposed method is effective to improve the tracking efficiency and reduce the tracking time and the number of iterations for the different irradiances and load conditions. The maximum number of iterations was 11 iteration and the highest tracking time was 0.273s with tracking efficiency of about 99.98%.