Evaluation of a Particle Swarm Optimization Based Method for Optimal Location of Photovoltaic Grid-connected Systems

Abstract

The search of the optimal location is one of the main difficulties in the design of a photovoltaic grid-connected system. This article presents a new approach based in particle swarm optimization to solve the suggested problem. The net present value is chosen as the objective function, while the main constraint is the maximum installed peak power, which is imposed by the distribution network operator. The proposed algorithm is analyzed for different inertial vector values according to inertial probability, and it is compared with other metaheuristic methods. The proposed algorithm reaches better solutions under similar computational costs.