2018 IEEE International Conference on Innovative Research and Development (ICIRD)
11-12 May 2018,Bangkok Thailand
Particle Swarm Optimization Based Maximum Power
Point Tracking for Seawater Battery Application
Soedibyo*), Mohamad Ridwan, Andri Pradipta, Sjamsjul Anam, Mochamad Ashari
Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Technology
Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya, Indonesia
E-mail : *) dibyosoe@gmail.com
Abstract—Sea water battery is proposed as a renewable
energy source in Indonesia, since it is suitable alternative applied
for an archipelago country. The salinity of sea water causes the
power of seawater battery is going to be changed. Particle Swarm
Optimization (PSO) is proposed for tracking the maximum
power point of sea water battery. The result shows that PSO can
track the maximum power point very well though the salinity
changes every time. The average power output with the change of
salinity is obtained as 2964 watt for 3 kW seawater battery
design.
Keywords—sea water battery, renewable energy, particle swarm
optimization (pso), maximum power point tracking (mppt)
I. INTRODUCTION
Indonesia is a country in south-east Asia located between
Asia and Australia. Indonesia is an archipelago country which
has more than 13.000 islands. It causes that 2/3 area of
Indonesia consists of waters. Indonesia is also known as a
maritime country. Therefore, Indonesia has more potential
from its sea especially as renewable energy sources, such as
wave energy, ocean thermal, and tide and tidal power. Those
potential energy sources in Indonesia are shown in table 1 [1].
TABLE I. OCEAN POTENTIAL ENERGY SOURCES IN INDONESIA
No Energy Source Resources (MW)
1 Wave Energy 1,995.2
Ocean Thermal Energy
2 41,012
Conversion
3 Tide and Tidal Power 4,800
In recent years, renewable energy sources have more
important role to fulfill energy demand in future replacing the
conventional power plants since they produce no pollutions and
emissions. One of renewable energy sources coming from
ocean potential which is not optimally used in Indonesia is sea-
water battery.Therefore; it could be an alternative solution for a
renewable energy source applied for an archipelago country.
Sea water battery is a kind of battery in which the minerals
of sea water as the electrolyte. In principle, sea water battery is
similar to Volta-element which has two main parts, electrolyte
and electrodes. The first development of sea water battery was
done in 80’s. In 1985 [2], Norwegian Defense Research
Establishment (NDRE) associated with Alcatel-STK and
Marintek to develop a power source for an autonomous deep
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sea oil well for Statoil. Aluminum-sea water battery was built
in 1989 for undersea water vehicle [3]. Therefore, sea water
battery would be a potential energy source which can be
applied for sea water vehicles or can also be applied for fishing
boats which usually use a diesel for the prime mover or supply
some equipment, such as fishing cooler and lightings.
The condition of salinity of sea water always changes at
each point of the sea, so it causes the power of sea water
battery also changes. Therefore, it needs a power point tracker
to obtain the maximum power of sea water battery in every
condition. As in PV system, many algorithms to track the
maximum power point have been developed [4]-[6], such as
Perturb and Observe (P&O), incremental conductance, and
fuzzy logic control,
In the study, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm
is proposed for tracking the maximum power point of seawater
battery due to the changes of sea water salinity. PSO is an
algorithm having proven its ability to obtain an optimum value
in a certain area through individual interactions. The main
problem is, sometimes, that the system is trapped in a local
optimum instead of global optimum value. Therefore, the
optimum value is never met by the system. PSO, however, is
able to overcome the problem.
The study is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the
model of sea water battery. The theory of DC power transfer is
described in section 3. The proposed method is explained in
section 4. Section 5 shows the simulation result, while the
conclusion is described in section 6.
II. SEAWATER BATTERY MODEL [7]-[8]
A. Seawater Battery Principle
The principle of sea water battery is similar to volta
element. There are two components inside of the battery,
electrodes (cathode and anode) and electrolyte which allows
cathode and anode to exchange ions in one direction as they
charge or in the other direction as they discharge (deliver the
elctricity). The elctrolyte is coming from sea water which
contains various components such as sodium, chloride, sulfur,
etc. Fig. 1 shows sea water components.
 R.T § γ sea c sea ·
E = N m .α ln ¨ ¸ (1)
z.F ¨ γ c river ¸
© river ¹
The potential of the battery, or known as electromtive force, E,
is determined by the number of membranes, Nm, and some
constants, such as R is the universal constant {8.31
Fig 1. Sea water components K/(mol/K)}, T is absolute temperature (K), z is the valence of
the ions, F is Faraday constant (96485 C/mol), γ is activity
coefficient, and csea and criver aresea water and river water
concentration respectively.
Similar to the other types of battery, sea water battery also
During charge discharge process, the ion transport and has the internal resistance, called Rohm, which is depending on
chemical reactions occur. When the battery is charged, Na+ the number of membranes, called Rohmic, and the material used
ions are extracted and transported to the negative electrode, as the elctrodes, called Relectrode, which usually varies from 1 to
while the elctrons are transferred from cathode to anode 100 Ÿm2.According to the condition Rohm of sea water battery
through electodialysis chemical reactions. When a load is is shown in eq. 2.
connected to the battery, the electrons would be ttransferred § ·
R Nm R AEM
+ R CEM + h + h river ¸ +
1 − β ε 2.κ sea ε 2.κ river ¸¹ R electrodes
from anode to cathode. The chemical reactions are shown in = ¨ sea
(2)
Ohmic
2 ¨© 1 − β
fig. 2.

Resistance area (Ÿm2) is defined as RAEM and RCEM. h defines

the distance of inter membrane electrode (m), while K is the
conductivity of electrolyte (S/m).
The electrical equivalent circuit of sea water battery
according to the electromotive force (E) and its internal
resistance is illustrated in fig. 3.

(a)

Fig 3. Seawater battery equivalent circuit

(b)
Fig. 2. Chemical reactions of sea water battery; (a) charge (b) disharge

The internal voltage (Rohmic) causes voltage drop in the

terminal of sea water battery. The condition is shown in eq. 3.

V bat = E − ROhmic . j (3)

Where j is current density (A/m2) flowing through each

electrode of the battery terminal.

I
B. Sea Water Battery Model j= (4)
A
Sea water battery is modelled as Nernst equation shown in
eq. 1. A is area of each electrode (m2). If eq. 3 is substitute with eq.
4, the current flowing can be expressed as.

(5)

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 ( E − V bat )
I = .A
ROhmic
III. MAXIMUM POWER TRANSFER THEORY OF DC SOURCE
The maximum power transfer theorem is a useful circuit
analysis method to ensure that the maximum amount of power
would be dissipated by the load. The theorem said that “the
maximum amount of power will be dissipated in the load
resistance if it is equal in value to the Thevenin or Norton
source resistance of the network supplying the power. In
detail, it could be shown in the explanation below.
able to be transferred optimally to the load. The particles are
represented as ܺ௜ ൌ  ሺܺ௜ଵ ǡ ܺ௜ଶ ǡ ܺ௜ଷ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܺ௜஽ ሻ. Of those particles,
it is chosen the best particle, called, pbest, which is recorded and
represented asܲ௜ ൌ  ሺ‫݌‬௜ଵ ǡ ‫݌‬௜ଶ ǡ ‫݌‬௜ଷ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫݌‬௜஽ ሻ. Then, among pbest
values, it is obtained a global best value, gbest. The position and
the velocity of the particles are updated in every iteration using
eq. 10 and 11 respectively.
‫ݒ‬௜௡ାଵ ൌ ‫ݒݓ‬௜௡ ൅ ܿଵ ‫݀݊ܽݎ‬ሺሻሺ‫݌‬௜௡ െ ‫ݔ‬௜௡ ሻ ൅
(10)
ܿଶ ‫݀݊ܽݎ‬ሺ ሻ൫‫݌‬௚௡ െ ‫ݔ‬௜௡ ൯
‫ݔ‬௜௡ାଵ ൌ ‫ݔ‬௜௡ ൅ ‫ݒ‬௜௡ାଵ (11)
In every updating the particles, there needs random value
between 0 and 1, which is obtained by a function rand(). c1 and
c2 are constant parameters, while w is an inertia weight. ‫ݒ‬௜௡ and
‫ݔ‬௜௡ are velocity and position of a ith particle respectively. The
complete flowchart of PSO algorithm can be seen in fig. 5.

Fig 4. Thevenin equivalent circuit

According to the Thevenin equivalent circuit in fig. 4, the

output current Io can be obtained.
ܸ௦
‫ܫ‬௢ ൌ (6)
ܴ௦ ൅ ܴ௅
while the power output is.
ܲ௢ ൌ ‫ܫ‬௢ଶ ܴ௅ (7)
If the value of Io in eq. 7 is substituted by eq. 6, the equation
would be.
ଶ
ܸ௦ (8)
ܲ௢ ൌ ൬ ൰ ܴ௅
ܴ௦ ൅ ܴ௅
The maximum value of Po dissipated by RL can be obtained
ௗ௉
for బ ൌ Ͳ.
ௗோಽ

݀ܲ଴ ܸ௦ଶ ሺܴ௦ ൅ ܴ௅ ሻଶ െ ʹܸ௦ଶ ܴ௅ ሺܴ௦ ൅ ܴ௅ ሻ (9)

ൌ
ܴ݀௅ ሺܴ௦ ൅ ܴ௅ ሻଶ
ௗ௉బ
It can be proven from eq. 9 that for ൌ Ͳ, it can be obtained
ௗோಽ
if the value of ܴ௅ is equal in the value of ܴ௦ .
IV. PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION BASED MPPT FOR SEA
WATER BATTERY
Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) was firstly proposed by
J. Kennedy and C. Eberhart in 1995 [9]. PSO is one of artificial
algorithms which is inspired by individual interractions in a
group of animals, such as swarm of birds, school of fish, etc.
PSO has proven sucessfuly to optimize various mathematical
functions, so it interests many researchers to develop especially
in engineering.
Particles in PSO represent the possible solutions. In this
study, the output of PSO is set a duty cycle of MPPT circuit. It
is used to set so that the power supplied by seawater battery is

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 V. SIMULATION RESULTS
Start The model of seawater battery and MPPT algorithm are
simulated using PSIM software. The output of seawater battery
is connected to a buck-boost converter to track the maximum
Initialize particle with random power of seawater battery before it is transferred to the load.
position and velocity The results and analysis are then presented. Table 2 and 3
shows the parameters used in this study. Fig. 6 shows all
diagram of seawater battery system and its MPPT.
Evaluate fitness P
for each particle TABLE II. SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Nm 928
Alpha 0.97
T R 8.3
P > Pp_best?
T 300
Y Z 1
Pp_best = P F 96458
Seawater Battery
Parameters Gsea 1
Csea 30 – 36
Set best of Pp_best as Pg_best
Griv 1
Criv 0.5
Update position and ‫ݓ‬ 0.8
velocity PSO Parameters ‫ܥ‬ଵ 0.12
‫ܥ‬ଶ 1.2
L 5 mH
Evaluate fitness P
for each particle Buck-Boost C 1000 uF
Converter RL 10 Ÿ
Parameters freq 20 kHz
T
P > Pp_best? duty cycle 0 – 90 %

Y
Pp_best = P
The seawater battery in this study is designed to have
power output around 3 kW. The simulation was done in two
cases. The first case is tracking the maximum power with
T constant salinity, and the second is tracking with the changes of
Pp_best > Pg_best?
salinity. The result is discussed below.
Y In the first case, the salinity is set 36. This value is referred
to the average of Indonesia’s ocean salinity. Fig 7 and 8 show
Pg_best = Pp_best the result of tracking process, power and duty cycle result
respectively.

Update position and

velocity
V V
Vs Vout
Rohmic 464
Nm Iout

Iteration = T alpha Vbatt

Vbatt L C Vout
iteration max? R
RL
T
Z
Y
alpha F V V_comp_ref
m
Stop
Nm giving g_best
as the optimal solution Gsea V Csea V V_pwm
R Csea PWM
T V V_sgt
Z Griv
F
Fig 5. Complete flowchart of PSO algorithm
Gsea Criv PSO Algorithm
Pout Block
Csea Iout Pout
Griv
Criv

Fig 6. Seawater battery model and its MPPT

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Fig 7. Power output (salinity = 36)
Fig 8. Duty cycle tracking to obtain the maximum power of seawater battery
According to the simulation result, PSO algorithm can track
the maximum power of seawater battery when the salinity is
36. The output of PSO is to set duty cycle value which is used
to control the switching mechanism of buck-boost converter, so
the maximum power is obtained. The result shows that the
maximum power obtained is 3055 watt with the best duty cycle
is 81.7%. Based on the transferred power DC theory, the power
transferred to the load when the resistance of the load is the
same value as the series resistance of the battery, which is the
internal resistance in this case. Therefore, buck-book converter
is responsible for changing the impedance to get the maximum
power through the switching mechanism. The switching
mechanism is determined using PSO algorithm by tracking the
maximum power obtained. According to the simulation result,
it can be said that PSO is able to track the maximum power of
seawater battery.
The second case was designed by changing the salinity
value. Fig. 9 shows the change of the salinity. It is designed to
change between 30 – 36.
Fig 9. The change of salinity
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Fig 10. Power output (according to the change of salinity)
Fig 11. Duty cycle tracking (according to the change of salinity)
Fig 10 and 11 show the power output and the best duty
cycle respectively accordance with the change of salinity.
When the salinity goes down, the power output also decreases.
However, the decrease of power caused by salinity does not
change significantly. When the salinity is 30, the power output
is 2799 watt. When the salinity is 35, the power output is 2932
watt. The more increase the salinity, the more power output can
be obtained. The average power output with the change of
salinity is obtained as 2964 watt. This value is enough for
satisfying 2.5 kW for a cold storage and some lighting if it is
implemented for a fishing boat [10]. The value of duty cycle is
same as the value of the previous case, which is 81.7 %. The
duty cycle is not affected though the salinity changes. Once the
duty cycle is obtained, it can be used for any other conditions.
VI. CONCLUSION
According to the study of maximum power point tracking
of seawater battery, it can be concluded that PSO can track the
maximum power of seawater battery very well with average
power output as 2964 watt when the salinity is changed from
30 - 36. The change of salinity does not influence the tracking
process to get power around 3 kW. PSO is still able to track
the maximum power point in spite of the change of salinity.
The future research is to implement this design into hardware
and applied for a fishing boat cooling system.
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