Improvement of the Maximum Power Point Tracker for photovoltaic generators with Particle Swarm Optimization technique by adding repulsive force among agents

This paper deals with Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control of photovoltaic generators. Photovoltaic (PV) generation systems need maximum power point tracker because the PV power output depends on the operating terminal voltage and current. Further, the PV array exhibits two or more MPP´s under partial shading condition and hence finding the MPP using conventional techniques is a difficult task. To overcome the difficulty, finding the MPP, the authors improve the MPPT with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique by adding a kind of ¿repulsion term¿ to the equation of PSO algorithm. The term enables to improve the response to various types of insolation change. This results in lower cost, higher overall efficiency and also the algorithm is simple. The improved PSO-MPPT algorithm is verified through simulative and experimental studies. It is proved this algorithm is superior to the original PSO-MPPT methods by evaluating generated power and electrical energy.