MPPT of PV Systems Under Partial Shaded Conditions Through a Colony of Flashing Fireflies

Author

Sundareswaran, Kinattingal ; Peddapati, Sankar ; Palani, Sankaran

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Nat. Inst. of Technol., Tiruchirappalli, India

Volume

29

Issue

2

fYear

2014

fDate

Jun-14

Firstpage

463

Lastpage

472

Abstract

This paper reports the development of a maximum power-point tracking (MPPT) method for photovoltaic (PV) systems under partially shaded conditions using firefly algorithm. The major advantages of the proposed method are simple computational steps, faster convergence, and its implementation on a low-cost microcontroller. The proposed scheme is studied for two different configurations of PV arrays under partial shaded conditions and its tracking performance is compared with traditional perturb and observe (P&O) method and particle swarm optimization (PSO) method under identical conditions. The improved performance of the algorithm in terms of tracking efficiency and tracking speed is validated through simulation and experimental studies.

Keywords

maximum power point trackers; microcontrollers; particle swarm optimisation; photovoltaic power systems; power system control; MPPT; PSO; PV arrays; PV systems; colony; flashing fireflies; maximum power point tracking; microcontroller; partial shaded conditions; particle swarm optimization; photovoltaic systems; tracking performance; Brightness; Convergence; Equations; Mathematical model; Optimization; Power generation; Temperature; Firefly algorithm (FA); maximum power-point tracking (MPPT); partial shaded conditions (PSCs); particle swarm optimization (PSO); perturb and observe (P&O) method; photovoltaic (PV) systems;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Energy Conversion, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0885-8969

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TEC.2014.2298237

Filename

6715995