Optimization of the maximum power point of photovoltaic working under partial shading conditions

Abstract

Photovoltaic is used to convert electricity from solar radiation. The working characteristics of photovoltaic depend on environmental conditions such as temperature, solar radiation intensity, and the surrounding environment. During operation, the photovoltaic generation system (PGS) can be partially or completely shaded due to natural phenomena such as clouds, buildings, dust, animals, electric pillars, trees ... these are changing the characteristics of the system’s power output of PV. This paper proposes a maximum power point tracking algorithm for PGS operating under partially shaded condition (PSC) based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method, and a configuration comprises of three PV modules type PHM60W36 is used to simulate using PSIM software. The study focused on changing the working characteristics of the photovoltaic system when changing factors such as level, location of the photovoltaic module are shaded. The effectiveness of the proposed method is not only compared with the traditional Perturb and Observe (P&O) method but also compared with those proposed previously under the same operating conditions. In addition, an experimental model was developed to investigate the response of the proposed solution in the real environment with the Chroma-62050H simulator. The results show the superiority of the proposed solution in improving the performance MPPT and convergence speed of the system under complex operating conditions.