Maximum power point tracking of PV array under non-uniform irradiance using artificial neural network

This paper presents a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method for tracking the global peak (GP) of photovoltaic (PV) array under non-uniform irradiance using artificial neural network (ANN). A feed forward multilayer perceptron model with Levenberg - Marquardt back propagation algorithm is used for tracking the global peak. The MPPT algorithm takes irradiance of PV modules as input and gives duty ratio of boost converter as output. The MPPT presented using ANN is compared with conventional hill climbing (HC) method and the actual values obtained from the P-V characteristics. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of PV array output power is calculated for both hill climbing method and proposed ANN method. Finally, a qualitative comparison is made between hill climbing method and ANN method.