Determination of Global Maximum Power Point Tracking of PV under Partial Shading Using Cuckoo Search Algorithm

Abstract

A maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is a method to extract the optimal operating point of the photovoltaic power generation system. Under partial shading conditions (PSC), the power voltage characteristics exhibit more than one local peaks and one global peak. This paper presents a cuckoo search (CS) algorithm to catch the global maximum power point of PV under PSC. The main contributions of this work are to minimize the tracking time and increase the tracking efficiency of the PV modules. Furthermore, this work aims to study the behavior performance of two MPPT techniques which have been designed for extracting the GMPP under the PSC. The developed algorithms are implemented in MATLAB/Simulink platform, and their performances are evaluated. In addition, a step up (boost) DC–DC converter is designed and interfaced with resistive load in the proposed model. The prominent outcomes show that the CS has the best performance compared to the Perturb and observe (P&O) techniques. In addition, for all test cases, the tracking efficiency of the CS is higher than 99.97% within 150–180 ms.