Dynamic Reconfiguration of PV Array under Partial Shading Condition by Using Automatic Switching

Abstract

The mismatching effect caused by partial shade is one of the critical problems in the operation of photovoltaic (PV) arrays, it can cause large losses in the power produced by the PV system. Power losses due to partial shading (PS) for a particular operating situation may be controlled by altering the PV array's scheme connection. For that reason, this paper presents an Automatic Switch Block (ASB) based on dynamic relays without using an algorithm to control the connection between PV panels to reduce the effect of partial shading and provide the ability of scaling. The Simulation results showed that the proposed module has a high ability and efficiency in mitigating and reducing the effect of partial shade on solar panel arrays by automatically changing the electrical connection between the panels compared with total cross-tied (TCT), Futoshiki puzzle pattern (FPP), Sudoku and L-Shape Algorithm. Moreover, the proposed method was tested in SIMULINK/MATLAB environment for different shading patterns and achieved an improvement in maximum power point tracking (MPPT) by about 12% as compared with L-Shape, more than 30% compared to TCT, and about 15% for other methods.