Outdoor evaluation of total cross-tied Si module under driving conditions

Abstract

This paper presents the fabrication and evaluation of a total cross-tied (TCT) Si module designed to mitigate the partial shading effect, which is known to reduce the output performance of vehicle-integrated photovoltaic (VIPV) modules. The TCT module, consisting of 27 Si solar cells interconnected both vertically and horizontally, demonstrated an 18.8 % decrease in output power when one cell was shaded. In contrast, the output of the series-parallel (SP) Si module decreased by 31.6 % under the same shading condition. Comparative analysis of the output performances of TCT, SP, and single-string commercial modules under three driving conditions revealed that increasing the number of strings helped alleviate the impact of partial shading. Notably, the TCT module configuration showed a positive impact on mitigating the partial shading effect.