Development of Observer-Based Photovoltaic MPP Tracker under Partial Shading Conditions

A new and simple current sensorless particle swarm optimization (PSO) to extract maximum power under partial shading condition in a photovoltaic (PV) power generation system is proposed in this paper. The existing techniques used for extracting the maximum power in a PV system, in partial shading condition, requires the current and voltage sensors. The use of current sensors (CS) for tracking maximum power point in a partial shading condition is completely avoided in the proposed work. This make the system more simple, less cost, easy to implement and reliable. The effectiveness of the proposed method is studied with the help of a suitable simulation carried in MATLAB platform and for experimental validation a microcontroller is used. The results obtained from the simulations and experimental studies showed that the proposed current sensorless method can track the maximum power point accurately, in partial shading conditions.