Performance Improvement of Solar Photovoltaic Array by Modified Bridge Link Array Configuration

Abstract

In this paper, a new tie-connected array configuration is proposed by modifying the conventional bridge link (BL) array configuration. The BL array configuration is popular due to the minimum number of tie connections, which reduces the cable losses and yields the maximum power in uniform irradiance condition as compared to the other conventional tie connected configurations. But in partial shading condition, BL array configuration is more prone to mismatch losses and gives less power in comparison with total-cross-tied (TCT) array configurations. In this paper, the BL array configuration is modified by considering the reduced number of tie connections with improved performance. The performance of the modified BL array configuration is compared with the BL array configuration in terms of the maximum output power, shading loss, and mismatch loss. From the obtained results, it is observed that the modified BL array configuration outperforms conventional BL array configuration in all the cases of shading patterns which are considered in this paper.