Certain investigations on maximum power point tracking strategies for photovoltaic systems under partial shading conditions

Abstract

The world has been concerned with its stable operation of nonconventional PV power system without any adverse effect on the environment. Tracing the true Maximum Power Point (MPP) is critical for the implementation of an effective PV system. Consequently, a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) controller is required for the collection of maximum energy from the solar panel. Many PV panels can be connected in series or in parallel to obtain the necessary voltage and current. Due to the shade of woodlands, houses and moving clouds, partial shading conditions (PSC) occur in these systems and photovoltaic modules will be insolated differently. The PSC complicates the current versus voltage curve with multiple peaks. One of them is the real MPP known as Global MPP (GMPP), while all other MPPs are called Local MPPs (LMPPs). The current research work aims to investigate how MPPT techniques for solar photovoltaic systems work for a stand-alone PV system under uniform and shaded irradiance conditions, and to include the best among the proposed MPPT approaches for grid connected system. The research initially explored the significance of an MPPT algorithm in a photovoltaic system for working with maximum efficiency using conventional PandO technique. The analysis showed that the MPPT algorithm improves system performance by significantly increasing PV power and thus improving PV systems effectiveness. In this research work, for stand-alone photovoltaic system, four different MPPT approaches are suggested, named DFPandO, DFVSSPandO, ABCPO and PCC. In MATLAB / Simulink, a two-panel PV power system is modelled under uniform and PSC using traditional MPPT algorithms such as Perturb and Observe (PandO) and Incremental Conductance (INC), biologically inspired Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithms, conventional and biological model hybrid (ABC-PO) and Predictive Current Control (PCC) methods. The first work analyzes the conventional PandO and variable step size PandO (VSSPO) for tracking MPP of solar PV systems. The change in the operating po