Selection of an Optimum Configuration of Solar PV Array under Partial Shaded Condition Using Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper presents an extraction of maximum energy from Solar Photovoltaic Array (SPVA) under partial shaded conditions by optimum selection of array size using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique. In this paper a detailed study on the output reduction of different SPVA configurations under partial shaded conditions have been carried out. A generalized MATLAB M-code based software model has been used for any required array size, configuration, shading patterns and number of bypass diodes. Comparative study has been carried out on different configurations by testing several shading scenarios. While the number of shading patterns and the rate of change are very low for stationary SPVA but these may be quite large for SPVA mounted on a mobile platforms. This paper presents the suitability of PSO technique to select optimum configuration for mobile arrays by calculating the global peak (GP) of different configurations and to transfer maximum power to the load. Keywords—Global peak, Mobile PV arrays, Partial shading, optimization, PSO.