A MPPT algorithm based on membrane system for photovoltaic systems under partially shaded conditions

The algorithm based on membrane system, also called membrane-inspired algorithm, has been shown to be powerful for solving combinatorial optimization problems, and it is increasingly used in practical engineering. With integrating membrane structures, evolution rules and computational mechanisms of membrane systems, membrane-inspired algorithms perform well in searching the global optimum. However, this technique can be computationally expensive because of complicated rules and communication mechanism, so that most of membrane-inspired algorithms solved problems off-line. In this work, we propose a novel membrane-inspired algorithm for tracking the global point (GP) online. The ring structure with memory mechanism is adopted to maintain diversity and the convergence that is speeded up by the fast making rules. We verify our method by solving four benchmark functions, and a numerical example of tracking the GP of photovoltaic (PV) system. The experimental results show that our methodology performs well on these four benchmark functions compared with the genetic algorithm and quantum-inspired algorithm. In practice, our method quickly tracks the GP of a PV system. Copyright © 2016 American Scientific Publishers. All rights reserved.