An Economic Solution to Optimize Performance of Photovoltaic Modules under Partial Shading

This paper investigates the effects of partial shading pertaining to photovoltaic (PV) modules and subsequently a solution that aims to minimize the effects and optimize the performance of PV modules is proposed. The concept of the solution is to integrate boost and buck converters into an electronic control system. The proposed system is simple and economic solution as it integrates cheap and easy available electronic components such as microcontrollers, capacitors, transistors and inductors. To validate the effectiveness of proposed system, a measuring instrument, namely NI cFP-1808 is used to perform the electrical characteristic analyses or known as I-V and P-V curve analyses. Furthermore, an outdoor experiment was conducted to examine the practicality of the proposed system in tackling real-world conditions. Experimental results showed that the proposed system improves the performance of the PV modules by 82.9% compared to the controlled experiment. In short, the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed system is proven with experiment results.