Solar Photovoltaic Array Reconfiguration for Reducing Partial Shading Effect

Abstract

In the photovoltaic (PV) system some problems happen causes a substantial reduction in power generation, one of these problems are Partial shading (PS), and (PS) happen when some obstacles block the sun's rays on the photovoltaic (PV) cells in a PV array, panel, or module in the PV system. Therefore, this paper suggests a method for reducing the effects of partial shading and increasing output power by reconfiguring a solar photovoltaic array using a new shade dispersion strategy (NSDS). The improvements achieved in maximum power point MPP when the shadows are angled or have a significant size, NSDS is also suitable for any photovoltaic array size. The simulation in this study was done by using MATLAB-software Simulink. Different shapes for shades were taken like Short and Wide (SW), Short and Narrow (SN), Long and Wide (LW), and Long and Narrow (LN) partial shading in addition to diagonal shade (DI). The suggested method was used on 6x3 photovoltaic panels to solve the partial shadow problem that cannot be solved by some previous shadow dispersion methods like so du Ku and stepwise. Also, it is applied to a 4x2 PV array which is considered difficult to spread the shadows to all PV panels because of its small size. Analysis and comparisons of the output characteristic were done using Cadmium telluride (CdTe) F-4112-3 PV panels and it was found that the increment in the generated power is more than 30% in comparison with the typical series-parallel (SP) for the SW and LW shades while it is more than 30% and 20% in comparison with the Total-Cross-Tied (TCT) configuration for the SW and LW shades respectively.