A Comprehensive Study of Module Layouts for Silicon Solar Cells Under Partial Shading

Abstract

Integrated applications for solar energy production becomes increasingly important. The electrification of car bodies and building facades are only two prominent examples. In such applications shading becomes a challenging problem, since the classic serial interconnection of solar cells in terms of power output is highly vulnerable to partial shading. In this article, we investigate the three most common module layouts in the market (conventional, butterfly, and shingle string) and add a fourth layout (shingle matrix) to be introduced to the market in the future. We discuss an approach to cluster shadings occurring in urban surroundings into basic shapes like “rectangular” and “random”. Choosing a Monte Carlo technique in combination with latin hypercube sampling (LHS), we consider more than 3000 scenarios in total. For the evaluation of the scenarios, we conduct circuit simulations using LTspice. Furthermore, we define a normalization base, which considers only partial shading as a quantitative baseline for comparison. Our results show, that already for 200–400 scenarios the obtained output values stabilize. Among the investigated module layouts, the shingle matrix interconnection achieves the highest score, followed by a shingle string, half-cell butterfly and the conventional full-cell layout.