Nonlinear fractional order PID controller for tracking maximum power in photo-voltaic system

This paper presents a fractional order nonlinear Proportional Integral Derivative (FONPID) controller to efficiently achieve the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) in Photovoltaic (PV) systems working under rapidly varying solar intensity and the temperature. In this paper, comparisons have been made among different techniques in respect of the extent of energy extracted from the photovoltaic (PV) system using MATLAB platforms. Gains of the proposed FONPID controllers are optimally tuned using a meta-heuristic based Elitist Teaching Learning Based Optimization (ETLBO) algorithm. The performance assessment of the FONPID controller is made in terms of efficiency, settling time, rise time and ripple. The ETLBO tuned FONPID controller outperforms the other controller such as PID, Nonlinear PID (NPID), Fractional order PID (FOPID) and perturb and observe (P O) technique. Therefore, in view of the meticulous investigation it is inferred that the proposed FONPID controller is an emerging MPPT technique with highest tracking efficiency and negligible ripple.