A Dynamic Electrical Scheme for the optimal reconfiguration of PV modules under non-homogeneous solar irradiation

Abstract

This paper presents a strategy for the maximization of the output power of photovoltaic (PV) systems under non homogeneous solar irradiation by means of automatic reconfiguration of the PV arrays layout. The innovation of the proposed approach is the employment of a simple Dynamic Electrical Scheme (DES), allowing a large number of possible modules iterconnection, to be installed between the PV generator and the inverter. The models of the PV generator and of the DES have been realized and simulated with Simulink (Dynamic System Simulation for MATLAB). The attained experimental results appear to be quite interesting in terms of the attainable benefit in power and thus energy terms. The limited calculation times of the reconfiguration algorithm allows the application of the DES for the real time adaptation of the configuration to the changing weather conditions or other causes of non-uniform solar irradiation. Moreover, the results confirm that, in case of non uniform solar irradiation, this approach allows to attain considerably much better results than those attainable with a static configuration.