Recent developments of MPPT techniques for PV systems under partial shading conditions: a critical review and performance evaluation

Abstract

This review covers global maximum power point tracking (GMPPT) methods for photovoltaic (PV) systems under partial shading conditions. Unlike the previous review works that primarily focused on soft computing and hybrid GMPPT, this study gives exclusive attention to the improvement achieved by the conventional MPPT (perturb and observe, hill climbing, and incremental conductance). The improved methods include the popular 0.8 × V oc model and, more recently, the skipping algorithms. In addition to providing qualitative descriptions of the available techniques, this work also attempts to provide a fair evaluation of GMPPT to determine their comparative performances. The competing algorithms, which are selected to represent every category (conventional and soft computing and hybrid MPPT), are benchmarked under carefully selected operating conditions and shading scenarios. The evaluation is focused on four main criteria: tracking accuracy, convergence time, length of voltage fluctuations, and transient efficiency during the search for the global maximum power point. The results obtained from this study can become a basis for researchers and designers to select the best MPPT technique for their respective applications.

A Hybrid Maximum Power Point Tracking Method without Oscillations in Steady-State for Photovoltaic Energy Systems

“…The ratio of ( 9) to (8) indicates the power loss in steady state with the oscillations, since the loss due to the oscillations is nearly eliminated with the proposed algorithm The ratio of power loss in (10) indicates that the tracking power loss for the PV system in steady-state is increased by the factor of 1/2b 2 due to the tracking oscillations. If b = 0.5, the loss is three times.…”

“…In [5][6][7][8][9][10], several control schemes have been presented to track the MPPs for PV systems. Some of these methods have simple configurations but low efficiencies due to the use of open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current method.…”

“…PSCs often occur in large PV systems and cause losses in system output power. To deal with the tracking for PV system under PSCs [12,13,[22][23][24], many algorithms have been proposed, such as artificial neural network (ANN) [10], particle swarm optimization (PSO) [13,18,19], fuzzy-logic control (FLC) [18], genetic algorithm (GA) [9,10], and twostage searching [22]. Most of them have good tracking performance, but it takes longer to track the global maximum power points (GMPPs).…”

A skipping adaptive P&O MPPT for fast and efficient tracking under partial shading in PV arrays

“…Thus, the speed of the proposed MPPT remains the same as, 63,64 which does not introduce much improvement. On the other hand, although the modified IC proposed in 66 increases greatly the tracking speed, it may fail in locating the GMPP for some partial shading patterns as argued by 47,68 …”

“…On the other hand, although the modified IC proposed in 66 increases greatly the tracking speed, it may fail in locating the GMPP for some partial shading patterns as argued by. 47,68 In the recently published literature, a new family of MPPT techniques [69][70][71] uses the I-V characteristics to skip scanning certain voltage intervals on the P-V curve, resulting in a significant improvement in the tracking speed. The Voltage Window Search (VWS) 71 is an efficient global MPPT method that uses a large voltage step to scan the P-V curve.…”