A Novel Solar Photovoltaic Array Reconfiguration Technique Using Two-Dimensional Generalized Arnold's Cat Map

Abstract This paper presents a highly efficient image encryption-based Arnold's cat map (ACM) technique to reconfigure the photovoltaic (PV) array to enhance the output and mitigate the mismatch losses due to partial shading (PS). The proposed ACM technique concentrates on alleviating the power loss by effectively dispersing the shade over the entire PV array without modifying its electrical circuitry. The proposed reconfiguration technique is investigated and analyzed with conventional series–parallel and total-cross-tied configurations along with the recently reported chaotic Baker's map, odd–even, odd–even–prime pattern-based configurations. The proposed technique is examined for symmetrical 6 × 6 PV array and unsymmetrical 6 × 9 PV array under distinct nonuniform and uniform PS cases. To confirm the potency and superior performance of the proposed technique, the system has been extensively examined with nine performance parameters such as global maximum power, mismatch power, power loss, efficiency, fill factor, array yield, capacity factor, performance ratio, and the number of maximum power peaks. An experimental setup of a 4 × 4 array reconfiguration system prototype is developed and tested in a real-time environment to validate the effectiveness of the proposed technique over the existing ones. From the comprehensive investigation, it is regarded that the proposed technique offers consistently superior performance with the least percentage mismatch losses and maximum power enhancement of 48.8%, 31.03%, and 27.5% for various shading cases of 6 × 6 and 6 × 9 PV arrays.