Partial Shading Impact on PV Array System and the Hard-Shading Location with BP Algorithm

Abstract

As an important renewable energy source in microgrid, photovoltaic (PV) generation has developed rapidly recently because of the merits of high flexibility and expansibility. But the partial shading from the trees, buildings or clouds easily appears in the large-area PV array system. In this paper, the partial shading impact on the PV array system is analyzed, and the results show that it will reduce the whole output power generation and the hard-shading fault will damage the stability of the PV system. In addition, it is analyzed that the parallel connection is much more advantageous than the series topology in partial shading situation, thus it is advised that the parallel connection should be adopted when the series voltage meet the requirement. Secondly, the hard-shading detection based on voltage sensor configuration is proposed and the hard-shading fault characteristics quantity is analyzed. Thirdly, according to the abovementioned fault feature, the backpropagation (BP) algorithm is adopted to locate the faulty position. Finally, the model is constructed in Matlab/Simulink circumstance to verify the analysis and the data is collected to verify the BP algorithm.