An Efficient Hybrid Algorithm for Design and Analysis of MPPT System for PV based Cascaded Half Bridge Multilevel Inverter

Abstract

While the photovoltaic (PV) system demand rises day after day in the context of renewable energy, the system efficiency plays a driving role as it depends on the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques, which continuously adjust the tracking point of the PV array to extract the maximum energy. In this research work, we suggest an efficient hybrid algorithmic strategy for design of a reduced count multilevel inverter (MLI) for MPPT applications in solar PV systems. The proposed hybrid MPPT algorithm integrates the advantages of conventional and advanced control techniques to achieve faster response, higher tracking accuracy and reduced steady state oscillations. The proposed design of the MPPT algorithm integrates the well-known perturb and observe (P&O) technique for fast tracking during quickly changing irradiance with a particle swarm optimization (PSO) to refine the tracking point near the global maximum power point, and effectively reduce the steady state oscillations and raise the efficiency of the PV system during the low irradiance time as well. The designed hybrid algorithm is applied to the proposed reduced count MLI topology. The MATLAB Simulink results validate that the hybrid P&O-PSO MPPT algorithm output has sufficiently a faster tracking efficiency with reduced oscillations as compared to the conventional techniques, making it highly applicable for the PV systems.