Maximum Power Point Tracking for PV system under partial shading condition via particle swarm optimization

Performance of Photovoltaic (PV) system is greatly dependent on the solar irradiation and operating temperature. Due to partial shading condition, the characteristics of a PV system considerably change and often exhibit several local maxima with one global maxima. Conventional Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) techniques can easily be trapped at local maxima under partial shading. This significantly reduced the energy yield of the PV systems. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a Maximum Power Point tracking algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) that is capable of tracking global MPP under partial shaded conditions. The performance of proposed algorithm is evaluated by means of simulation in MATLAB Simulink. The proposed algorithm is applied to a grid connected PV system, in which a Boost (step up) DC-DC converter satisfactorily tracks the global peak.