Novel PWM Control with Modified PSO-MPPT Algorithm for Reduced Switch MLI Based Standalone PV System

Abstract

Abstract This paper proposes a new version of swam optimization based algorithm for maximum power harvesting from the multilevel inverter (MLI) based photovoltaic (PV) generation systems. The ability of modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) based maximum power point tracking (MPPT) approach is investigated for varying environmental conditions and partial shading condition. Moreover, the tracking performance is compared with perturb and observe (P&O) MPPT and standard PSO-MPPT techniques. MLIs are chosen over conventional two-level inverters due to many advantages such as; power quality improvement in PV generation system, reduce the filter size requirement etc. With the increase in number of levels; the conventional MLI circuit leads to bulky & costly due to the requirement of more number of power electronics switches. Therefore, in this work a novel MLI with reduced number of switches has been developed for off-grid PV system. Harmonic reduction is principally depended on the modulation strategy used to control the MLI. In this regard, a logical switching state selection PWM control technique is presented for the proposed MLI. The overall system is simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK and new solution to attain MPPT from standalone PV generation system has also been validated experimentally in the laboratory.