Implementation of an MPPT technique of a solar module with supervised machine learning

Abstract

Automated calibration of a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm for the photovoltaic (PV) system is pivotal for harnessing the maximum possible energy from solar power. However, most existing calibration methods of such an MPPT system are cumbersome and vary greatly with the environmental condition. Hence, an automated pipeline capable of performing suitable adjustments is highly desirable. We proposed a method using supervised machine learning (ML) in a solar PV system for MPPT analysis. For this purpose, an overall schematic diagram of a PV system is designed and simulated to create a dataset in MATLAB/Simulink. Thus, by analyzing the output characteristics of a solar cell, an improved MPPT algorithm on the basis of a neural network (NN) method is put forward to track the maximum power point (MPP) of solar cell modules. Moreover, we implemented the algorithm in a hardware setup and verified the theoretical result with the empirical data. Typically, the performance accuracy of the NN models is around 97∼98%. But our proposed model shows an even higher efficiency (99.8% approximately) without adding to any extra computational cost.