A novel MPPT method for photovoltaic application under partial shaded conditions

Abstract Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) gains much attention as an important optimisation field for the photovoltaic (PV) systems. Under Partial Shading Conditions (PSC), the Power-Voltage (P-V) curve of a PV array exhibits multiple picks. Therefore, the conventional algorithms, regardless of their simplicity, may fail to track the Maximum Power Point (MPP). However, the non-conventional algorithms, despite their efficiency on tracking the global pick, are more difficult to implement since they need more hardware and software requirements. Thus, literature proposes many variants of non-conventional algorithms that improve their simplicity and efficiency. This paper proposes a new MPPT technique that gathers simplicity and effectiveness. The proposed method combines the Simplified Accelerated Particle Swarm Optimisation (SAPSO), a variant of the Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm and the classical Hill Climbing (HC) algorithm. The aims are to ensure equally fast, simple and efficient MPPT process with limited hardware and software requirements. Simulations and practical application are carried out under the partial shading condition in order to validate the proposed technique.