Abstract
The output power against voltage curve of the photovoltaic system changes its characteristics under partial shading conditions because of using bypass diodes. These bypass diodes are connected across the PV modules inside the string to avoid hotspot formation in the shaded PV modules. Therefore, the output curve has multiple power peaks with only one Global Max Power Point. The classical Maximum Power Point Tracking algorithms may fail to track that Global Max Power. Several soft computing algorithms have been proposed to improve tracking efficiency with different optimization principles. In this paper, an Improved Cuckoo Search Algorithm has been proposed to increase the tracking speed with minimum output power oscillation. The proposed algorithm avoids spreading the initial particles among the whole curve to predict shading pattern, but it reduces the exploration area after each iteration to compensate for the algorithm’s randomness. The proposed algorithm was compared with other methods by simulation using MATLAB/Simulink program and with practical experiments under the same operating conditions. The comparison showed that the proposed algorithm overcomes the other methods’ drawbacks and concurrently minimizes the convergence time, power oscillation, and system power losses.