TY  - EJOU
AU  - Mbasso, Wulfran Fendzi 
AU  - Dagal, Idriss 
AU  - Singla, Manish Kumar 
AU  - Shaikh, Muhammad Suhail 
AU  - Smerat, Aseel 
AU  - Fatais, Abdullah Mohammed Al 
AU  - Almufih, Ali Saeed 
AU  - Mamlookol, Rabia Emhamed Al 

TI  - Drift-Aware Global Intelligent Optimization and Advanced Control of Photovoltaic MPPT under Complex Operating Conditions: A Cameroon Case Study
T2  - Energy Engineering

PY  - 2026
VL  - 123
IS  - 4
SN  - 1546-0118

AB  - Photovoltaic (PV) systems in the field operate under complex, uncertain conditions rapid irradiance ramps, partial shading, temperature swings, surface soiling, and weak-grid disturbances including off-nominal frequency and voltage distortion that degrade energy yield and power quality. We propose a drift-aware, power-quality-constrained MPPT framework that co-optimizes MPPT, PLL, and current-loop gains under stochastic frequency drift, while enforcing IEEE-519 limits (per-order I<sub>h</sub>/I<sub>L</sub> and TDD) during optimization. Unlike energy-only or THD-only methods, the design target integrates PQ constraints into the objective and is validated across calibrated drift scenarios with explicit per-order and TDD reporting. Operating scenarios are calibrated to Cameroon’s Southern Interconnected Grid and city-specific profiles (Douala/Yaoundé), combining measured-style irradiance/temperature traces, partial-shading patterns, and stochastic frequency drift up to ±0.8 Hz with synthetic contingencies. Across a 30-scenario campaign, the proposed controller achieves η<sub>MPPT</sub> = 99.3%–99.6% (vs. 98.6% Incremental Conductance and 97.8% Perturb-and-Observe), lowers DC-link ripple by 35%–48%, reduces oscillatory PCC power by ≈41%, maintains THD ≤ 2.5% (5% limit) and PF ≥ 0.99, and shortens irradiance-step settling from 85–110 ms to 50–65 ms. Sensitivity to PLL bandwidth shows a broad optimum (≈60–90 Hz) with minimum THD/ripple, and ablations confirm that explicit drift weighting is pivotal to ripple and THD suppression without sacrificing yield. The approach is controller-agnostic, firmware-deployable, and generalizes to other converter-interfaced renewables; we outline a short hardware-/HIL-validation path for adoption in Sub-Saharan grids.
KW  - Maximum power point tracking (MPPT); metaheuristic optimization; frequency-drift–robust control; grid-connected renewable energy (Cameroon); power quality (IEEE 519)

DO  - 10.32604/ee.2026.072751