International Journal of Advanced Engineering Application

Particle Swarm Optimisation-Based Global Maximum Power Point Tracking for Photovoltaic Systems Under Partial Shading Conditions: Boost Converter Design and Experimental Validation

Author(s):Suresh Nair, Meenakshi Sundaram

Affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Calicut, Kozhikode, Kerala, India, Department of Power Electronics, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

Page No: 47-52

Volume issue & Publishing Year: Volume 3, Issue 7, 2026/07/07

Journal: International Journal of Advanced Engineering Application (IJAEA)

ISSN NO: 3048-6807

DOI:

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Abstract:
Photovoltaic (PV) energy systems deployed in rooftop and ground-mounted configurations across Indian climatic zones routinely experience partial shading conditions arising from clouds, adjacent structures, and inter-row self-shading in large solar farms. Under partial shading, the PV array power–voltage characteristic exhibits multiple local maxima, rendering conventional perturb-and-observe (P&O) and incremental conductance (INC) maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithms susceptible to premature convergence at local maxima that may deliver 20–40% less power than the true global maximum power point (GMPP). This paper presents a Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO)-based MPPT controller integrated with a high-efficiency synchronous boost DC–DC converter for GMPP extraction under partial shading in a 310 W, two-module series-connected PV array. The PSO controller employs fifteen particles, an inertia weight linearly decayed from 0.9 to 0.4 over 100 iterations, and cognitive and social acceleration coefficients of 2.0 each, operating on the converter duty cycle search space. The boost converter is designed for 24–48 V step-up conversion at 40 kHz switching frequency with synchronous rectification achieving 96.8% peak conversion efficiency. Experimental and simulation results on the MATLAB/Simulink platform with a dSPACE DS1104 rapid-control-prototyping board confirm that PSO-MPPT achieves 97.1% tracking efficiency under uniform irradiance and 93.4% under a two-step partial shading pattern, outperforming P&O (87.2%, 71.6%) and INC (89.8%, 76.3%) under the same conditions. Annual energy yield simulation for Coimbatore meteorological conditions projects a 9.7% increase in annual generation relative to P&O, corresponding to a payback period reduction of 0.8 years for a 5 kWp residential system. Total harmonic distortion of the grid-injected current is 2.8% with PSO-MPPT, well within the IEEE 1547-2018 limit of 5%.

Keywords: photovoltaic, MPPT, partial shading, particle swarm optimisation, boost converter, global maximum power point, solar energy, power electronics

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