A Water Cycle Algorithm Maximum Power Point Tracker for Photovoltaic energy conversion system under Partial Shading condition

Set of factors including the limited fossil resources and rising of fossil fuel price have been causes moving to create the new structure that is based on providing energy security, and protect the environment. One of the alternatives is the Photovoltaic System (PV). Maximum power point tracker has an important role to increase the efficiency of the PV systems. One of the difficulties in maximum power point tracking methods is rapid changes in operating conditions which affects the maximum power point (MPP) of PV. The main contribution of this paper is presentation of a robust and reliable maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method for tracking of MPP of PV under Partial Shading Condition. The proposed method is based on water cycle optimization algorithm approach. In order to verify the accuracy of the proposed method, simulations are performed in MATLAB/SIMULINK. The proposed method is compared with perturb and observe (P&O) .The results show that water cycle optimization algorithm based MPPT approach can track the MPP of PV better than P&O. The main features of the proposed approach are high speed for duty cycle determining and high accuracy in MPP tracking of PV in the any contingency.