Maximum power point tracking for PV panels using ant colony optimization

Output power of solar panel varies with respect to irradiance and temperature. So maximum power should be extracted from solar panels using Maximum Power Point Tracking. As irradiance changes continuously during the day, many algorithms fail to give maximum power as they get stuck at local maximum. In order to overcome this problem, we propose Ant Colony Optimization which obtains global maximum and improves the efficiency of solar panels. The proposed work has been implemented using Matlab/Simulink. Also, the hardware results obtained indicate the superiority of Ant Colony Optimization over the conventional Maximum Power Point Tracking methods.