Enhancement of maximum power output through reconfiguration techniques under non-uniform irradiance conditions

Abstract

Partial shading is one of the major drawback which diminishes the power output of the PV array. One of the effective methodologies is reconfiguration strategies, namely shifting the location of PV modules from one place to different places so as to distribute shading effects over the array to increase maximum power output under PSCs. This paper proposed two novel puzzle arrangements followed by Ken-Ken (KK) and Skyscraper (SS) for 4×4 total-cross-tied (TCT) PV array and increase maximum power under PSCs. In this approach, the PV modules in the TCT array is arranged according to Ken-Ken and Skyscraper arrangements without changing the electrical connections. Further, the performance of the proposed arrangements are investigated with different existing PV array configurations by comparing the global maximum power point (GMPP), the voltage at global maximum power point (VGMPP), mismatch losses (ML), fill-factor (FF), efficiency (η) and possible local peaks (PLP) under different shading patterns using Matlab-Simulink. An extensive simulation study is carried out on these configurations under different shading patterns as well as temperatures. Also, a comprehensive comparison has done for various reconfiguration schemes presented in literature. The result shows that the proposed arrangements are enhancing the global maximum power as compared to the other existing configurations.