Photovoltaic Module Configurations Research Articles

Evaluating electrical power yield of photovoltaic solar cells with k-Nearest neighbors: A machine learning statistical analysis approach

The increasing demand for sustainable and renewable energy solutions reflects the critical importance of advancing photovoltaic (PV) technology and its operational efficiency. In response, this study introduces a novel application of the k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) algorithm to assess the reliability and applicability of solar panel simulation data which aimed to classify current states of partial shading, open, and short circuit conditions, alongside regression-based analysis for predicting specific operating parameters. In this research, a published dataset that involved various PV module configurations under different environmental conditions was tested and evaluated. The k-NN technique was applied to both classify the operational status and predict performance metrics of the modules. The diagnosis model demonstrated an accuracy of 99.2 % and an F1 score of 99.2 %, indicating a high degree of reliability in identifying the operational states of PV modules. Concurrently, the regression model exhibited a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.036 and an R2 value of unity that showcased its effectiveness in predicting the operational parameters based on the simulation data. The concluded results are further enriching the effectiveness of simulation-based data generation to be endorsed and implemented before jumping into real experimental applications, in addition to highlighting the potential applicability of k-NN and machine learning for PV cells productivity statistical analysis.

Investigation of Electrical Configuration Topologies for Enhancing the Performance of Solar Photovoltaic Water Pumping System

The numerous solar energies provide humans with clean, environmentally friendly, and abundant energy resources. Electricity shortages and high diesel prices have an impact on rural water irrigation systems and drinking water supplies. Solar energy for water pumping could be an alternative to standard electric and diesel pumping systems. The rising importance of solar photovoltaic water pumping systems (SPVWPS) as a feasible power source in rural, inaccessible, and unconnected areas drives the study. These locations, often in poor nations like India, lack conventional power. Solar energy is converted into electrical energy via photovoltaic (PV) technology, which is then used to power a DC or AC submersible or surface water pump. PV module configurations are crucial in improving a PV system’s performance. Many researchers have studied the solar water pumping design on series parallel combination and acquired the best system efficiency, but the other configurations, Total Cross Tied (TCT) and Bridge Link (BL) have never been employed in a solar water pumping system. This research aims to investigate the experimental comparison of different PV configurations for better system efficiency on different operating parameters. These PV array layouts were considered in a uniform situation. The result shows that power increases with increase in radiation and the flow rate provided by (6Sx2P) configuration is 18,956 l/day of water and calculated the best average pump efficiency.

Optical Filter Design for Daylight Outdoor Electroluminescence Imaging of PV Modules

This paper presents an advanced outdoor electroluminescence (EL) imaging system for inspecting solar photovoltaic (PV) modules under varying daylight conditions. EL imaging, known for its effectiveness in non-destructively detecting PV module defects, is enhanced through specialized optical filters. These filters, including a bandpass filter targeting EL emissions and a neutral density filter to reduce background light, significantly improve the system’s signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The experimental results demonstrate the system’s enhanced performance, with superior clarity and detail in EL emissions, enabling precise defect localization and characterization at the cellular level. Notably, the system achieves an SNR improvement, with values consistently above two, outperforming previous systems and confirming its suitability for efficient solar PV maintenance and diagnostics. This research offers a flexible approach to optimizing EL imaging quality across various solar irradiance levels and angles, essential for improved PV module performance and reliability. The system effectively handles different PV module configurations, orientations, and types, including monofacial and bifacial arrays. It showcases robust imaging capabilities under high solar irradiance and different sun illumination levels, maintaining high-quality imaging due to its optimized filter design. Additionally, the system’s adaptability in detecting EL emissions from series-connected PV modules is highlighted, demonstrating its comprehensive evaluation capabilities for PV array performance.

Effects of light, heat and relative humidity on the accelerated testing of photovoltaic degradation using Arrhenius model

Energy demands in Nigeria has increased tremendously over the past decade due to the increasing levels of industrialization and population size. This has led to a higher reliance on solar photovoltaic (PV) modules for power generation since Nigeria receives abundant solar energy. However, no information exists on the lifetime and reliability of PV modules operating in the Nigerian climate. The information on how long PV modules will last when operated in the Nigerian weather becomes necessary since many private and Government parastatals are heavily investing in installing and relying on PV generated electricity. The objective of this study is to compute the acceleration factor and effective temperatures in different strategic locations in Nigeria by considering the combined effects of light, heat and irradiation. The analysis is conducted for different PV module configurations (glass-cell-polymer) and (glass-cell-glass) using the Arrhenius model. A 13-year (2005–2017) climatic data of seven strategic locations that encompass the six climatic zones in Nigeria including the National Capital was used. Results are that when relative humidity was neglected, the acceleration factors for the seven states ranged from 1 to 4. However, when relative humidity was considered, Northern states with relative humidity of about 50% had the highest acceleration factors of up to 50, while other regions with relative humidity above 80% had peak acceleration factors of about 14. The results obtained from this study should provide useful guidelines on the lifespan testing of PV modules operating in Nigeria as a case study and other geographical regions as well.

Assessment of hybrid renewable energy systems to drive water desalination plant in an arid remote area in Jordan

ABSTRACT Jordan is relatively poor in conventional energy resources and it is dependent on foreign energy sources to cover its energy needs. At the same time the low percentage of freshwater along with the rapidly growing population urge to drag the attention to water desalination. This study presents an investigation and assessment of renewable energy resources to operate a reverse osmosis desalination plant located in arid remote area Sail El hasaa, Jordan with a capacity of up to 100 m3 of daily. The HOMER Hybrid Optimization Model Tool has been used to create optimal designs for these renewable energy systems. The photovoltaic system, wind turbine system, diesel generator, and hybrid system are evaluated in terms of each system’s net present cost and cost of energy. Different configurations are suggested for each system and compared to meet the analysis requirements. Results showed that the hybrid system is the most optimum system with the configuration of photovoltaic modules, diesel generator, wind turbine, and DC/AC converter.

Enhanced performance of partially shaded photovoltaic arrays using diagonally dispersed total cross tied configuration

ABSTRACT Partial shading on photovoltaic (PV) systems causes a reduction in generated power and multiple peaks on their electrical characteristics. These adverse effects depend on the types of interconnection between modules and the intensity of insolation. This paper proposes a new configuration of PV modules, known as Diagonally dispersed Total Cross Tied (D-TCT), to achieve an enhanced performance under partial shading conditions. The unequal distribution of the shaded modules in various rows of TCT configuration produces greater power loss and more number of peaks in the electrical characteristics. The basic idea of this method is to disperse shaded modules to various rows such that an approximate-balanced distribution of shaded modules is possible for almost all practical shading patterns resulting in the enhanced performance. The performance of D-TCT is analyzed and compared with existing TCT and odd-even configurations and is found that the proposed method gives better performance over the existing methods. An experimental study is also carried out using 16 number of 20 W solar panels connected in 44 arrays and it is observed that the proposed method gives an enhanced power of and as compared to TCT configuration for various shading patterns.

Performance Analysis of Partially Shaded Photovoltaic Array Using Magic Square View Configuration for Shade Dispersion

Abstract The power generated by the photovoltaic (PV) array is affected by the partial shading, caused by the neighboring object shadows, dirtiness, moving clouds, bird droppings, different orientation angles of PV modules, deposition of dust in modules, and the physical location of the PV module. Therefore, the PV systems exhibit multiple peaks of generated power and do not always track the maximum power point (MPP). Thus, to overcome these problems of multiple peaks, the PV panels are reconfigured using either electrical or physical reconfiguration methods. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the performance of magic square view (MSV) configuration of PV modules under partial shading conditions (PSCs). For validation, three kinds of PSCs patterns are considered and are then compared to the Total Cross Tied (TCT) and Sudoku (SDK) configurations: long and wide, short and narrow, and long and narrow. Overall, the obtained results show that the MSV configuration allows us to increase the power generated by the PV array by 34% and 7% under the three types of shadow studied as compared to the TCT and SDK configurations, respectively. The PV array configurations parameters are performed based on matlab/simulink software. The simulation and performance analysis of PV array configurations is performed with 81 PV modules of BP Solar Poly BP 380 modules.

PV Distributed-MPP Tracking: Total-Cross-Tied Configuration of String-Integrated-Converters to Extract the Maximum Power Under Various PSCs

The building integrated photovoltaic (PV) central inverter architecture comprises various PV module configurations. The PV module configurations are vulnerable to shading effects and cause mismatching power losses. To reduce the detrimental impact of shading and mismatching on energy production, the PV distributed-maximum power point tracking (D-MPPT) architecture has been proposed. In this architecture, an individual dc–dc converter with an MPPT controller is integrated to each PV module for extracting the maximum power. This topology is referred to as module-integrated-converter (M-I-C). In the conventional PV D-MPPT architecture, the output terminals of M-I-Cs are connected either in series or parallel configuration only. The conventional configurations of M-I-Cs have the drawbacks of cross-coupling effects, lower conversion efficiency, two-stage voltage conversion, etc. This paper proposes the total-cross-tied (T-C-T) configuration of string-integrated-converters (S-I-Cs) to overcome the drawbacks of M-I-C configurations. The detailed mathematical analysis of the proposed T-C-T configuration of S-I-Cs is also presented in this paper. The perturb and observe MPPT technique is used for extracting the maximum power. The performance of the proposed T-C-T configuration of S-I-Cs is analyzed under various partial shading conditions and also compared with the PV central inverter architecture as well as with conventional M-I-C configurations.

Module configurations in photovoltaic system: A review

The various solar energy applications offer clean, environment friendly and exhaustive energy resources to human being. Solar system directly converts the sunlight energy into electrical energy through Photovoltaic (PV) module and indirectly through concentrated lenses. PV module configurations play vital role in improving the performance of the PV system. This paper discussed the impact of different configurations like series parallel (SP), total cross tied (TCT), Bridge link (BL) and honey comb (HC) on system performance. Attempts are also made to highlight the currents issues and challenges involved in solar system.

The effect of shading on photovoltaic solar panels

A modelling description of photovoltaic (PV) modules in a PSPICE environment is presented. To validate the simulation model, a lab prototype is used to create similar conditions as those existing in real photovoltaic systems. The effects of partial shading of solar cell strings and temperature on the performance of various PV modules are analyzed. The simulation results show a very good agreement with those obtained experimentally in similar conditions, either in lab, at Lisbon University, and under outdoor testing in Sweden, using PV solar collectors manufactured by Solarus Sunpower AB. The potential of the simulation analysis is highlighted as a flexible and powerful tool for the design of new and more competitive PV module configurations for the collectors in solar panels.

Analysis of PV module connected in different configurations under uniform and non-uniform solar radiations

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on investigating the current--voltage (I--V) and power--voltage (P--V) characteristics of a photovoltaic (PV) module connected in various configurations like series, parallel, and series-parallel. The performance analysis of PV module has been carried out under uniform and non-uniform conditions such as change in irradiation (passing clouds), change in temperature, accumulation of dust, and change in wind speed using MATLAB-Simulink environment. From the observed results, it has been indicated that for a given number of PV modules, the array configurations affect the maximum available output power and more local maxima are found under partially shaded conditions. Moreover, the comparative analysis of PV module has been performed for various configurations under the above disturbances. From the results, it is evident that even under non-uniform conditions, the parallel configuration of PV modules is more prominent and maximum output power is obtained. Further, parallel layout is particularly convenient for minimizing shadowing effects. The parameters of the PV module have been obtained from the manufacturer datasheet (KC200GT) for these investigations.

Multivariable maximum power point tracking for photovoltaic micro-converters using extremum seeking

It is well-known that distributed architectures such as micro-converters and micro-inverters for photovoltaic (PV) systems can recover between 10% and 30% of annual performance loss or more that is caused by partial shading and/or module mismatch. In this work, we present a novel multivariable gradient-based extremum-seeking (ES) design to extract maximum power from an arbitrary micro-converter configuration of PV modules, that includes cascade and parallel connections. Conventional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) schemes for micro-converters (where each PV module is coupled to its own DC/DC converter) employ a distributed control, with one peak seeking scheme per each PV module, thereby requiring one control loop and two sensors per module (one each for current and voltage). By contrast, the scheme that we present employs a single control loop with just two sensors, one for the overall array output current and the other one for the DC bus voltage. This multivariable design provides more flexibility in tuning the parameters of the controller, and also takes into account interactions between PV modules. The computational effort of our design is not higher than that of the conventional scheme, and simulation and experimental results show that our proposed design outperforms the conventional one. Thus, our proposed design offers two benefits: (i) the balance-of-system (BOS) cost reduction as a result of the lower number of sensors, and (ii) improved performance, both contributing towards reduced average cost/watt, and enhancing the economic viability of solar.

Current-Fed Soft-Switching Push–Pull Front-End Converter-Based Bidirectional Inverter for Residential Photovoltaic Power System

Photovoltaic (PV) residential power system is an important application of renewable energy. The parallel-connected configuration of PV modules rather than the series-connected configuration become popular considering the safety requirements and making full use of the PV generated power for the PV residential generation system. In this paper, a novel soft-switching current-fed push-pull front-end converter-based inverter is proposed. Push-pull converter has only two primary devices with common ground to supply and results in simple and reduced gating requirement. The device voltage is clamped naturally by secondary modulation without active clamping circuit or passive snubbers. Zero-current switching of primary devices and zero-voltage switching of secondary devices is achieved. Soft-switching is inherent owing to proposed secondary modulation, load independent, and is maintained during wide variation of input voltage and power transfer capacity, and thus is suitable for PV applications. A 250-W laboratory prototype of the converter is built and tested to demonstrate the converter performance over wide variations in input voltage and output power for PV applications.