Optimizing the Solar Photovoltaic Performance under Orthogonal Progressive Shading with Various Reconfigurations

Abstract

Renewable energy is in very much demand in current time due to its many favorable environment effect. Solar energy is one of the frontline sources of renewable energy. Solar photovoltaic converts the solar light into electricity. The performance of the solar photovoltaic depends on various parameters and one of such parameters is shading behavior. Further, the shading pattern and the progress of the shading are also important for predicting the solar performance. The interconnections of solar cells also impact the performance of solar photovoltaic. Therefore, a 4 × 4 module with various interconnections such as series-parallel (SP), total cross tied (TCT), bridge-link (BL), honeycomb (HC) and triple tied (TT) are studied under the row and column wise shading pattern. Shading pattern on a 4 × 4 module is increased cell by cell in horizontal direction, both from left to right and right to left. In the similar fashion, the shading pattern is varied from top to bottom or vice-versa in vertical direction. This shading pattern progresses from first row to the last and first column to last column in a progressive fashion. The power-voltage and current-voltage characteristics of solar photovoltaic are investigated for the mentioned shading patterns using various reconfigurations. The power output is identical when all cells in a row or column are shaded. On the other hand, if only few cells are shaded on row or column then the power output with TCT connection is highest among all connections. Further, the power output is for complete column shading is much higher than complete row shading for all the connections. The theoretical simulated results can ensure better implementation of interconnection in hardware set-up based on the shading pattern.