Contribution to the design and implementation of the Bio-inspired Firefly algorithm on FPGA circuit

Abstract

To enhance the supplied power from a photovoltaic system, the maximum power point tracking or MPPT is the way to do so. there are several factors that can influence the produced power from a Photovoltaic system, such as the temperature, irradiation and the partial shading. Photovoltaic array characteristic gets altered when complete or some parts of this system are shadowed by clouds, tall trees, deposition of dust, and surrounding buildings or shadow created by one of the Photovoltaic arrays to others in outside environments. This will lead to the appearance of several maximums in the Photovoltaic curve. That cause superfluous losses. When the partial shading occurs, the conventional MPPT methods will be uncapable to detect the global maximum point of the power, therefore, in this document, the Firefly Algorithm will be the based method for the MPPT controller, in order to improve the maximum power point tracking. Several tests and analysis by variating the temperature and the irradiation, beside the comparison with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, ending with algorithm implementation in FPGA, will demonstrate the supremacy of the proposed Bio- Inspired Algorithm and its efficiency.