An Overall Distribution Particle Swarm Optimization MPPT Algorithm for Photovoltaic System under Partial Shading

Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems under partial shading conditions (PSCs) have a nonmonotonic P -V characteristic with multiple local maximum power points, which makes the existing maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithms unsatisfactory performance for global MPPT, if not invalid. This paper proposes a novel overall distribution (OD) MPPT algorithm to rapidly search the area near the global maximum power points, which is further integrated with the particle swarm optimization (PSO) MPPT algorithm to improve the accuracy of MPPT. Through simulations and experimentations, the higher effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed OD-PSO MPPT algorithm in solar PV systems is demonstrated in comparison to two existing artificial intelligence MPPT algorithms.