A Novel and Fast MPPT Method Suitable for Both Fast Changing and Partially Shaded Conditions

In this study, a novel and fast maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm for a photovoltaic generation system is proposed. The main idea is to remove the random number in the voltage calculation equation of the conventional cuckoo search method. The advantages of the proposed method include 1) fast maximum power point (MPP) tracking speed and high MPP tracking accuracy under both uniform insolation and partially shaded conditions (PSCs), 2) simple MPPT structure, and 3) consistent solution can be achieved with only three particles and only one parameter is required to be tuned. In order to validate the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed method, both simulation and experiments are carried out on a 300 W prototyping circuit. According to the experimental results, the proposed MPPT method can improve the tracking time by 46.42% and 11.76% comparing to conventional perturb and observe (P&O) and variable-step P&O technique, respectively. In addition, the proposed method can successfully track the global MPP in 249 of 252 different PSC patterns. The tracking accuracies under both uniform irradiance and PSC conditions are all higher than 99.8%.