Ant colony system based PI maximum power point tracking for stand alone photovoltaic system

This paper introduces a social inspired optimization based control method for the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of a photovoltaic (PV) system. In particular, a well known proportional plus Integral (PI) controller is fine tuned using ant colony system algorithm and tested on a simulated stand alone PV array with battery load. The proposed ant colony based PI-MPPT controller is enhanced by the fractional open circuit voltage technique to rapidly and accurately track the maximum power point (MPP). The design algorithm of this controller is presented together with its simulation results. Satisfactory dynamic and steady state performance of the simulated PV system even under variable irradiance levels reflects the superiority of the proposed control technique over the traditional control methods.