A novel simple GMPPT method based on probability distribution of global maximum power point under partial shading conditions

A photovoltaic (PV) array with multiple modules in series with bypass diodes may present multiple power peaks under uneven shading and requires a control schema to regulate the system to global maximum power point (GMPP). While a lot of methods have been proposed in the literature, they are usually quite complex and does not fully take advantage of available characteristics of the PV array. This work will highlight a method to plot the probability distribution of MPP voltage under various shading conditions and temperatures for an array of 4 custom made PV modules using MATLAB. From this distribution, we propose a fast GMPPT algorithm that can reach true MPP more than 95% of the time for both an assumed equal probability distribution as well as for a real-world irradiation measurement. An experimental test to compare our method against several others like deterministic particle swarm optimization (DPSO), grey wolf optimization (GWO) and perturb and observe (P&O) is presented.