Hybrid African vultures-grey wolf optimizer approach for electrical parameters extraction of solar panel models

Three-diode model (TDM) of photovoltaic (PV) cells is a significantly precise model that addresses the electrical and optical losses in such PVs. Due to its nonlinearity and multivariable characteristics, the TDM is a complex and debatable PV model. This article proposes a novel hybrid African vultures-grey wolf optimizer (AV-GWO) approach to precisely estimate the electrical parameters of such TDM. The AVO is a novel meta-heuristic approach inspired by African vultures' behavior in nature. In the hybrid approach offered, the vultures' updating position formula of the AVO is applied to update the key-group parameters in GWO, resulting in an enhanced GWO approach. A new objective function that depends on the current error is proposed in this study, which the AV-GWO minimizes to precisely estimate the optimal nine parameters of such TDM. The nine electrical parameters attained through the hybrid AV-GWO approach are compared with that obtained via other meta-heuristic methods. In that regard, the AV-GWO approach has achieved superior and outstanding outcomes. For more realistic studies, the offered AV-GWO is efficiently utilized to design the optimal parameters of TDM for two industrial KC200GT and MSX-60 PV cells. In the optimization process, the hybrid AV-GWO has recorded the lowest optimal fitness values of 8.475e-13 and 7.412e-12 for KC200GT and MSX-60, respectively. Additionally, the AV-GWO has recorded the shortest computing time in 0.43412 (s) and 0.3142 (s) for KC200GT and MSX-60, respectively, which reflects its rapid convergence, supremacy, and stability, among other approaches. Those PV cells' modeled I-V and P-V curves closely coincide with the real data measured under various climatic conditions. The error between these results is less than 0.4%. The high performance of the hybrid AV-GWO approach-based TDM is verified by examining its absolute current error with that realized from other PV models. Consequently, the outcomes have depicted that the offered AV-GWO approach is superior and can be used to generate a precise PV model of any industrial PV cell, which is a unique addition to the PVs market. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).