FPGA implementation of PSO based MPPT for PV systems under partial shading conditions

This paper presents a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation of Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm for maximum power point tracking (MPPT). The PSO method is very effective to handle the multimodal power-voltage (P-V) curve under partial shading conditions and presents several advantages such as simple structure and good dynamic performances. The PSO method has been designed using the very high-speed description language (VHDL) and implemented on Xilinx Virtex5 (XC5VLX50-1FFG676) FPGA. The use of FPGA offers a high degree of flexibility and robustness for the MPPT algorithm. The simulations results demonstrate the accuracy of PSO for global peak tracking and its superiority over the Perturb and Observe (P&O) technique. The developed architecture is tested in real time application on a buck-boost converter. Experimental results confirm the efficiency of the proposed scheme and its high accuracy to handle the partial shading.