Spider monkey based improve P&O MPPT controller for photovoltaic generation system

Photovoltaic (PV) system uses maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique to maximize its power output. This paper presents a swarm inspired optimization based control method for the MPPT of a PV system. In particular, control methods of perturb and observe (P&O)-proportional integral (PI) and optimisation of this controllers using spider monkey optimisation (SMO) for MPPT control of PV generator are proposed. A well known PI controller is tuned using spider monkey algorithm and tested on a simulated stand alone PV system with local load. The proposed SMO based PI controller enhances the P&O MPPT technique to track the maximum power point (MPP) more rapidly and accurately. The design algorithm of this controller is presented with its simulation results. Simulation results under different environmental conditions are presented and discussed to verify the satisfactory performance of the proposed control, in which the optimised P&O-PI controller by SMO algorithms gives the better performance technique over the traditional control methods.