Hardware Implementation of Sensor-Less Matrix Shifting Reconfiguration Method to Extract Maximum Power under Various Shading Conditions

Abstract

Partial Shading Conditions severely deteriorates the power generation of the photovoltuic (PV) array. For conventional PV array configurations like total cross tide, bridge link, honeycomb, etc., partial shading condition inserts multiple peaks in the power voltage curve of PV array. This results in mismatch power losses and a reduction in the power generation capability of the PV array. This paper proposes a new reconfiguration method to increase PV power generation by shade distribution. This paper presents a new physical repositioning technique, a magic matrix shifting (MMS) method. The proposed PV array reconfiguration performance has been compared with available reconfigurations. It includes sudoku (SK), optimum sudoku (OSK), zigzag (ZZ), magic square (MS), skyscraper (SS), and novel shade dispersion (NSD). The performance has been investigated under uneven row (UR), uneven column (UC), triangular corner (TC), L shape (LS), left top corner (LTC), center (CT), short wide (SW), long wide (LW), short narrow (SN), long narrow (LN), random 1 (RM1) and random (RM2) shading condition. This work uses MATLAB/Simulink to model a 36, 213W, $6 \times 6$ PV array construction. The performance of the MMS method has been validated on an experimental setup up of $4 \times 4$ PV array construction on a real-time PV chroma emulator.