An improvement of global power tracking using skipping technique – based tunicate swarm algorithm for PV systems under partially shaded conditions

Irradiance on the PV modules is not distributed uniformly during partially shaded conditions (PSC). Bypass diodes employed to avoid the hot-spot phenomenon modify the power-voltage (P-V) curves such that several points corresponding to maximum power are generated. The metaheuristic algorithms track the global maximum power point (GMPP) by searching the whole space on the P-V characteristics. A tunicate swarm algorithm (TSA) based on a skipping technique is suggested in this investigation to track GMPP only in the necessary search space under uniform irradiance conditions (UIRs) and PSCs. The proposed scheme’s performance was successfully investigated experimentally by using a PV-boost converter configuration. The results show that under all tested conditions, the suggested approach achieves an average efficiency of roughly 99.7% and a peak tracking accuracy of 99.4%. Compared to GWO, ISSD, and IRSO, the convergence time is drastically reduced to almost 0.66 s. Furthermore, the suggested method shows improved stability with a standard deviation of roughly 0.045 W, indicating fewer oscillations around the GMPP. The regularity and importance of the improvements are confirmed by statistical analysis based on repeated trials, and ANOVA confirms the consistency and significance of the improvements. All things considered, the suggested MPPT approach proves to be superior to the other three algorithms.