Optimal Parameter Estimation of Solar Photovoltaics Through Nature Inspired Metaheuristic and Hybrid Approaches

Abstract

Estimation of solar photovoltaic (PV) equivalent model parameters through the manufacturer's datasheet or experimental performance current voltage (I-V) characteristics is an apprehension among researchers. In this paper, two approaches are instigated and compared i.e. metaheuristic pheromone value black widow optimisation (pv-BWO) and hybrid sailfish optimisation (h-SFO) for the estimation of a single-diode model (SDM) and double-diode model (DDM) parameters for the accurate solar PV modelling. Four distinct case studies that incorporate four different PV modules i.e. RTC France, PWP 201, SHARP ND-R250A5, and EIL 75W PV are investigated, where the validation of the proposed methods is carried out through the experimental performance characteristics of solar PV under test i.e. the I-V and power-voltage (P-V) performance characteristics. Moreover, the performance is evaluated on various error functions, and experimental I-V and P-V characteristics, where the results are also compared with the various techniques of parameter estimation in the literature. It is important to underline that the closeness of the objective function to zero exhibits the congruence of estimated parameters with the exact parameters, where the exact parameter value is not accessible. Therefore, the preciseness rests on the experimental data only, where any significant reduction in OF i.e. RMSE considered as an improvement towards the exactness of real unknown parameter values. The pv-BWO exhibits an average of 69.89% of lower error results when compared with few existing methods, whereas h-SFO recorded a higher RMSE of about 93% when compared with the pv-BWO which suggests the suitability of pv-BWO over h-SFO and few existing methods.