PV generating sources are one of the most promising power generation systems in today’s power scenario. The inherent potential barrier that PV possesses with respect to irradiation and temperature is its nonlinear power output characteristics. An intelligent power tracking scheme, e.g., maximum power point tracking (MPPT), is mandatorily employed to increase the power delivery of a PV system. The MPPT schemes experiences severe setbacks when the PV is even shaded partially as PV exhibits multiple power peaks. Therefore, the search mechanism gets deceived and gets stuck with the local maxima. Hence, a rational search mechanism should be developed, which will find the global maxima for a partially shaded PV. The conventional techniques like fractional open circuit voltage (FOCV), hill climbing (HC) method, perturb and observe (P&O), etc., even in their modified versions, are not competent enough to track the global MPP (GMPP). Nature-inspired and bio-inspired MPPT techniques have been proposed by the researchers to optimize the power output of a PV system during partially shaded conditions (PSCs). This paper reviews, compares, and analyzes them. This article renders firsthand information to those in the field of research, who seek interest in the performance enhancement of PV system during inhomogeneous irradiation. Each algorithm has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of convergence speed, coding complexity, hardware compatibility, stability, etc. Overall, the authors have presented the logic of each global search MPPT algorithms and its comparisons, and also have reviewed the performance enhancement of these techniques when these algorithms are hybridized.

Maximum Power Point Trackers (MPPTs) are power electronic conditioners used in photovoltaic (PV) system to ensure that PV structures feed maximum power for the given ambient temperature and sun’s irradiation. When the PV panels are shaded by a fraction due to any environment hindrances then, conventional MPPT trackers may fail in tracking the appropriate peak power as there will be multi power peaks. In this work, a shuffled frog leap algorithm (SFLA) is proposed and it successfully identifies the global maximum power point among other local maxima. The SFLA MPPT is compared with a well-entrenched conventional perturb and observe (P&O) MPPT algorithm and a global search particle swarm optimisation (PSO) MPPT. The simulation results reveal that the proposed algorithm is highly advantageous than P&O, as it tracks nearly 30% more power for a given shading pattern. The credible nature of the proposed SFLA is ensured when it outplays PSO MPPT in convergence. The whole system is realised in MATLAB/Simulink environment.

The paper presented here proposes a Photovoltaic (PV) System consists of PV panel, Maximum Power Point tracker (MPPT) & DC-DC boost converter targeted for DC loads of a Stand-Alone Photovoltaic application. A circuit based simulation of Photovoltaic (PV) panel is proposed in order to analyse & estimate the electrical behaviour of the panel with respective change in environmental conditions like irradiation & temperature. The Photovoltaic (PV) panel characteristic which is achieved from Shockley diode equation is non linear in nature. Thus Maximum Power Point tracker is designed with the help of a new circuit based simulation of Incremental Conductance algorithm to extract maximum power from the panel. A DC-DC boost converter is designed to get constant DC voltage output from changing DC panel voltage and hence duty cycle of the converter is calculated accordingly. The proposed system is designed using MATLAB/Simulink and the results have been found to be satisfactory.

Photovoltaic (PV) resources are connected to power grid through voltage source inverters. The quality of power output from PV inverter should be in grid compliance of IEEE standard. In this regard, the deployment of appropriate low pass filters such as inductor (L), capacitor (C) or inductor capacitor inductor (LCL) is critical as they aid in minimizing the harmonics being injected into the grid. LCL filters are well entrenched but they bring in stability issue due to resonance and therefore a damping controller with suitable control logic is needed. In this work, to suppress resonance, a Proportional Resonant-Derivative (PR-D) controller has been designed, proposed, and compared with existing counterparts, i.e., two-degree of freedom controller (2DOF) and feedback current controller. The results exhibits that PR-D controller admits meliorate resonance damping and constancy when compared with the two other schemes. The whole system has been simulated in MATLAB/Simulink environment and a prototype has also been made to ensure the performance.