Journal of Applied Science and Engineering, Vol.

24, No 2, Page 261-269 261

Investigation on ANFIS aided MPPT Technique for PV fed ZSI

Topologies in Standalone Applications
N. Kalaiarasi1 , Subhranshu Sekhar Dash2 , S. Paramasivam3 , and C. Bharatiraja 1*
1 Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology ,SRM Nagar, Kattankulathur,
603203, Kanchipuram, Chennai, TN, India
2 Government College of Engineering, Keonjhar, Odisha, India
3 Danfoss Industries Ltd, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India
* Corresponding author. E-mail: bharatic@srmist.edu.in

Received: Aug. 01, 2020; Accepted: Oct. 22, 2020

Solar photovoltaic (PV) system contributes a significant role in meeting power requirements and helps the decen-
tralization of power generation and distribution. The output of the individual photovoltaic module depends on
local temperature and irradiance. Since the variation of these parameters depends on the environmental factors,
it is difficult to obtain maximum power in all instances. The maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique
is used for tracking the maximum power available at a particular instant. This paper presents the maximum
power extraction from a photovoltaic system using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. AI based methods
provide a fast dynamic response with high accuracy and mitigate the effects of partial shading. A comparative
study is performed for various AI based MPPT techniques such as Fuzzy, Artificial Neural Network (ANN),
and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS). PV module output is interfaced with the resistive load
through the Z-Source inverter (ZSI). The ZSI boost the input voltage and provides an AC output voltage. The
AI based MPPT techniques have been investigated with conventional Z-source Inverter (ZSI) and Switched
Inductor Z-Source inverter (SL-ZSI). A simple boost control technique is employed to control, both conventional
and SL Z-source inverter. The performance of the system is verified using MATLAB Simulink.

Keywords: Shoot through duty cycle, MPPT, Fuzzy Logic Controller, Artificial Neural Network, ANFIS, Z-Source inverter
http://dx.doi.org/10.6180/jase.202104_24(2).0015

1. Introduction ertheless, the XZSI has limitations such as voltage stress

Solar energy has abundant in nature. It has inherent advan-
tages of less maintenance, pollution, and noise free system.
Some weaknesses of the PV system are low efficacy and
high investment cost. These drawbacks are overcome by
maximum power point tracking [1]. For integrating solar
resource, Z-source inverters have been preferred due to the
advantage of single stage conversion. However, the one-
step conversion is more prevalent compared with two step
conversion because of low cost, compactness, reliability,
and low voltage stress [2, 3]. The conventional ZSI has a
unique impedance network formed by two inductors and
two capacitors connected in “X”-shape called XZSI. In one
stage conversion, XZSI and SL-ZSI give attractive options
for grid integration and micro-grid applications [4–6]. Nev-
on the inverter bridge is high, discontinuous input current
and high inrush current, besides being large in size. In or-
der to increase the boosting ability of XZSI and reduce the
stress in the switches, Z-source Network (ZSN) has been al-
tered by adding extra passive components to that network
called the switched-inductor (SL) ZSN. Even though these
arrangements expand the boosting ability, the addition
of passive components results in a larger size, additional
losses, and added cost. Further enhancement of the XZSI
boosting, various research works on the Pulse width mod-
ulation (PWM) techniques and modifications of ZSN have
also been examined [3], [7–11]. Further, shoot through duty
cycle of ZSI has been controlled based on VMPP of the PV
system [10–16]. From literature, various MPPT methods are
262 N. Kalaiarasi et al.
offered to extract extreme power from the PV system such
as Perturb & Observe (P&O), hill climbing, Incremental
conductance (Inc-Cond), FLC, ANN, ANFIS, etc., are dis-
cussed in [17–19]. Some applications of ANN with PV are
presented in [20–22], Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system has been
discussed for estimating maximum power from a PV panel
based on the irradiance and temperature. The duty cycle of
the boost converter is tuned based on the fuzzy controller
output in [23] and FLC based MPPT incorporated with the
PV system has been discussed in [20–23] and ANFIS MPPT
for quasi Z-source inverters are discussed in [24, 25].
In most of the literature, the MPPT has been incorpo-
rated for PV with two-stage conversion, the substantial con-
tribution of this paper is AI based MPPT is incorporated
for adjusting the shoot through period of the ZSI according
to VMPP. The PV system performance is validated with AI
aided MPPT techniques with XZSI and SL-ZSI circuits. In
this study, the ANFIS based MPPT technique with SL-ZSI
gives more boosting potential and lesser inrush currents
due to its more passive components.
2. PV powered Z – Source inverter
(a)
(b)
Fig. 1. a) Representation of PV based ZSI with AI aided
MPPT techniques b) Circuit diagram of XZSI.
Fig. 1a shows an overview of the proposed system. In
this system, PV output voltage is fed to the Z-source in-
verter. SOLKAR 36 W PV panel output voltage is 20 V
at ambient temperature operation of 25o C and irradiance
average value of 1000 W/m2 . In this paper, AI based max-
imum power point tracking techniques i.e., FLC, ANN,
ANFIS are chosen to obtain the maximum voltage. The
input and output of the AI based MPPT techniques are irra-
diances, temperature, and VMPP respectively. According to
VMPP , the appropriate “shoot through period-D” of ZSI is
estimated. The value of “M” is calculated using the relation
M = (1-D). The firing pulses for the inverter are generated
using a simple boost control technique. The effectiveness
of the MPPT techniques is evaluated with various perfor-
mance parameters shown in Table 1.
3. Z-source Inverter
In this work, XZSI and SL-ZSI are discussed. The output
voltage is controlled by introducing a shoot-through opera-
tion, which is forbidden in traditional VSI. The ZSI operates
in two modes such as shoot-through (ST) and non-shoot
through (Non-ST) mode. Shoot through operation is de-
fined as turning on the switches connected in the same
leg.
3.1. XZSI circuit diagram and its operation
The circuit diagram of XZSI is shown in Fig. 1b. The equiv-
alent circuit of XZSI and its operating modes are shown
in Fig. 2. In ST mode, the diode is OFF and the capacitors
charge the inductors, and the inductor current increases
linearly. In Non-ST mode, the inverter work in any one of
“six” active states and “two” traditional open zero states
[2–4]. In the equivalent circuit, Vin , Vd , and Vi represent
the PV module output voltage, DC link voltage, and input
to the inverter bridge respectively. The diode available in
the DC source side is utilized to avoid the current flow
from load to source. The inverter operates at a switching
frequency of 10kHz. The operation and design equations
are considered from this reference [2]. The chosen value of
the inductor is 160 µH and the capacitor is 1000 µF.
The simulation results of XZSI is shown in Fig. 3. The
input voltage of the inverter is 150 V and the output line
voltage is approximately 490 V from that the phase voltage
is 282 V. The gain value is equal to 1.8. The voltage stress
on the capacitor and switch is 330 V and 500 V respectively.
The limitation of the XZSI is high voltage stress on the
switches and capacitors and high inrush current. These
limitations can be overcome by SL-ZSI.
3.2. Switched inductor Z-source inverter (SL-ZSI)
SL-ZSI topology is used to improve the voltage gain with a
lesser amount of ST ratio (D), due to that the modulation in-
dex is improved compared with XZSI. The circuit diagram
 Journal of Applied Science and Engineering, Vol. 24, No 2, Page 261-269 263

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 2. (a) Equivalent circuit of ZSI (b) ST state (c) Non-ST state.

(a) (b)

Fig. 3. Simulation Results of XZSI (Vin - input voltage, VC1, VC2- Voltage stress on the capacitors, Vab - Output voltage,
VTup , VTlow ,-Voltage stress on the upper and lower switches, Inrush current).

and operating modes are shown in Fig. 4.
In SL-ZSI, voltage stress on the capacitor and switches
are reduced as shown in Fig. 5. The voltage stress on the
capacitor is 200 V and switches are 250 V.
4. Maximum power point tracking Techniques
MPPT techniques are experienced in tracking the maxi-
mum power from the photovoltaic system. The conven-
tional techniques discussed in the literature [17, 18] have
been worked with a fixed step size this creates oscillations
around the MPP and declines the effectiveness of the sys-
tem. For improving the efficiency of the system, AI based
MPPT techniques such as FLC, ANN, ANFIS are used for
variable step sizing algorithms which can also reduce the
oscillations around MPP.
4.1. ANN based MPPT Technique
The training of ANN is performed with the “Levenberg
-Marquardt optimization algorithm” and discussed in [18].
ANN is used to create a model that correctly maps an in-
put to the desired output using historical data. The 220
data sets with input irradiance, temperature, and output
voltage have been used to train the neural network. The
obtained network structure comprises of two input layers,
ten intermediate layers, and one output layer (2-10-1).
The generated Neural Network (NN) from MATLAB
Simulink, training performance and the output voltage
is shown in Fig. 6. ANN produced VMPP of 16.9 V at
irradiance 500 W/m2 and temperature 25o C. The output
voltage across the load for XZSI and SL-ZSI is depicted in
Fig. 6c.
264 N. Kalaiarasi et al.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 4. Circuit diagram of SL-ZSI, a) ST state, b) Non-ST state.
(b)
(a)
Fig. 5. Output waveforms, Voltage stress and current stress of SL-ZSI.
4.2. Fuzzy logic controller based MPPT
The fuzzy logic controller has four blocks i.e., fuzzifier, rule
base, inference engine, and defuzzifier. FLC has distinct
advantages i.e., it works with vague inputs and does not re-
quire an exact mathematical model for handling nonlinear-
ities. In FLC, the computation is through linguistic values
and not an exact mathematical computation. In this work,
the selected linguistic values are “LW-low”, “MM-Medium”
and “HH-High”. Fig. 7 represents the membership func-
tions for inputs and rule base.
The Sugeno inference method along with max-min com-
position is computationally more efficient and has better
interpolative properties. The VMPP obtained from the
fuzzy controller at standard test condition is 17.1 V. Fur-
ther the fuzzy controller is incorporated with XZSI and
SL-ZSI topologies. The load voltage and other parameters
(c)
are shown in Tables 1 and 2.
4.3. ANFIS based MPPT Technique
The ANFIS integrates the ANN and FLC, thus this collabo-
ration provides the most predominant AI technique. The
irradiance, temperature of the PV module, and VMPP are
considered as input and output parameters respectively for
training the ANFIS network. According to the VMPP, the
ST period of ZSI is obtained to control the output voltage.
the data sets used for ANN are used to train the ANFIS and
the membership value of Fuzzy Inference System [FIS] is
tuned using a hybrid optimization method. The achieved
training error is 0.093461 for 30000 epochs. MPP voltage
and error value for various membership functions (MF)
such as Gauss, bell, and trapezoidal MF with nine rules
have been applied and verified the performance. It is ob-
served, the bell membership function provides more desir-
 Journal of Applied Science and Engineering, Vol. 24, No 2, Page 261-269 265

(a)

(b) (c)

Fig. 6. (a) Generated NN from Simulink, (b) Training Performance, (c) Obtained output voltage for XZSI and SL-ZSI

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 7. Membership function for (a) irradiance (b) temperature, (c) Rule base

able results in terms of more VMPP and fewer error values.
Further, the bell MF with four rules and nine rules were
compared. Bell MF with four rules produced VMPP of 16.6
V while that with nine rules produced 17.1 V. ANFIS with
bell membership function produce more VMPP compared
with ANN and FLC based MPPT algorithms.
5. Result discussions
SOLKAR 36 W panel, 36 cells are in series. PV module
output voltage is 20 V at ambient temperature operation
of 25 o C and irradiance average value of 1000 W/m2 . The
PV output is interfaced with ZSI then the performance is
verified. The value of “L” is 160 µH and the capacitor is
1000 µF is considered here based on the designed values.
For SL-ZSI, the number of inductors required is doubled
compared with XZSI. The value of the inductor is 80 µH
and the capacitor is 1000 µF is considered in this work.
Voltage stress across a capacitor is 200 V and the switching
device is 250 V respectively. For obtaining maximum power
from PV panel ANN, FLC, ANFIS based MPPT techniques
are incorporated. The 3-D view between the temperature,
irradiance, and MPP voltage is shown in Fig. 8 and noticed
that the VMPP increases with an increase in irradiance at a
reasonable temperature. From Fig. 9, ANFIS based MPPT
technique is obtained more VMPP in both variations in
irradiance and temperature.
Fig. 9a shows the maximum power point voltage for
variable irradiance when the temperature is kept constant
at 25 o C andFig. 9b shows the maximum power point
voltage for variable temperature when irradiance is kept
constant at a standard value of 1000 Watts/m2 .
From Fig. 10a the inrush current is less in SL-ZSI com-
266 N. Kalaiarasi et al.

Fig. 8. 3-D view of inputs and output.

pared with XZSI. In Fig. 10b, the irradiance is varied from

500 w/m2 to 1000 w/m2 at an interval of 0.5 sec and load
waveforms of ANFIS based MPPT with SL-ZSI for varia-
tions in irradiance. (a)

Percentage Efficiency of MPPT is given by Equation (1),

Pmpp- power at the maximum power point,
Pmpp
η=( ) × 100 (1)
Ppv

Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) is described by Equation

(2), where t(i) is test input and a(i) is the actual input
s
1 n
n i∑
RMSE = (t(i ) − a(i ))2 (2)
=1

Percentage Error (PE) is denoted by Equation (3)

1 n |(t(i ) − a(i ))|

n i∑
PE = × 100 (3)
=1
t (i )

RMSE, Percentage of efficiency, and percentage error are

(b)
calculated using Equation (1-3) and the parameters are
shown in Table 1. It is used for evaluating the perfor- Fig. 9. Estimation of VMPP for AI aided MPPT with (a)
mance of AI aided MPPT techniques. Considering the Variations in irradiance, (b) Variations in Temperature.
performance parameters, ANFIS offers improved values of
performance efficiency of 96.7 %, RMSE of 0.03, and the per-
above results, ANFIS based MPPT integrated with SL-ZSI
centage of error is 0.13 % compared with ANN and FUZZY.
gives more gain and lesser inrush currents with less shoot
it is observed that ANFIS gives a better result as compared
through duty ratio. SL-ZSI has additionally 6 power diodes
with ANN and Fuzzy based MPPT system for solar photo-
and 2 extra passive components. Due to this, the THD of
voltaic application. ANFIS gives maximum peak voltage
ZSI is lower than SL-ZSI. But the value obtained in ZSI and
and less percentage of error. ANFIS combines the advan-
SL-ZSI is an acceptable level.
tages of ANN and FLC. Selecting membership values and
framing the rule base is a challenging task in a fuzzy logic
controller. This limitation is overcome by the ANFIS based
6. Conclusion
MPPT algorithm. This paper offers an artificial intelligence based MPPT con-
From Table 2, it can be determined that ANFIS in- troller for the PV system in standalone operation. The
corporated with SL-ZSI produce high voltage gain, low modeled PV panel is integrated with XZSI and SL-ZSI has
inrush current with good modulation index. From the been discussed in this paper. SL-ZSI is used to solve the
 Journal of Applied Science and Engineering, Vol. 24, No 2, Page 261-269 267

(a) (b)

Fig. 10. (a) Inrush current of XZSI and SL-ZSI for ANFIS constructed MPPT, (b) Load voltage, load current, load power
and ST ratio of ANFIS based MPPT with SL-ZSI topology.

Table 1. Comparison of AI aided MPPT for PV applications

MPPT MPPT
MPPT incorporated
Parameters to compare incorporated incorporated
using FLC
using ANN using ANFIS
MPP voltage Vmpp (volt) 16.96 V 17.1 V 17.6 V
MPP current Impp (Amps) 1.87 A 1.87 A 1.87 A
Efficiency of MPPT 92.92 % 94.8 % 96.77 %
Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) 0.17 0.05 0.03
Percentage Error (% E) 0.94 % 0.17 % 0.13 %

Table 2. Performance evaluation of AI based MPPT with different ZSI topologies for PV applications.

ZSI (V) Incrush

MPPT Vout THD "M"
Topology Current (A)
ZSI 202 148 0.61 % 0.76
ANN Based MPPT
SL-ZSI 212 104 0.83 % 0.80
ZSI 212 142 0.85 % 0.73
FLC Based MPPT
SL-ZSI 232 113 0.95 % 0.752
ZSI 223 138 0.81 % 0.72
ANFIS Based MPPT
SL-ZSI 242 103 0.94 % 0.78

limitations of XZSI. Also, produces lesser voltage stress on
the capacitor and switch, low inrush current. The shoot
through duty ratio of ZSI is adjusted according to VMPP to
achieve maximum available power from the photovoltaic
system. It is realized that ANFIS gives a better result as
compared with ANN and Fuzzy based MPPT systems for
solar photovoltaic applications. Simulation results are pro-
vided to validate the proposed system with shoot through
duty ratio control. Further, this work can be extended for
grid-tied operation and hybrid algorithms such as fuzzy
PSO based MPPT.
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