An electromagnetism-like mechanism algorithm approach for photovoltaic system optimization

Abstract

Solar energy has become one of the most studied topic in the field of renewable energy. In this paper, an artificial intelligent approach is proposed for the optimization of a photovoltaic solar energy harvesting system. An Electromagnetism-Like Mechanism Algorithm (EM) has been developed to search for the hourly optimum tilt angles for photovoltaic panels. In order to investigate the effect of the search step size on the efficiency and overall accuracy of the algorithm, the EM has also been modified into several variants with different search step size settings. Experimental findings show that EM with bigger search lengths has the advantage of reaching a near optimum tilt angle in earlier iterations but less accurate. EM with smaller step lengths, on the other hand, can hit a relatively more optimum tilt angle in the process. During the peak of the power generation at noon, EM with smaller search stes found an optimum tilt angle which yielded additional 3.17W of power compared to a fixed panel. We thus conclude that the proposed EM performs well in optimizing the tilt angle of a photovoltaic solar energy harvesting system. © 2018 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science All rights reserved.