Power Generation Improvement in Unsymmetrical PV Arrays During Partial Shading via MR Technique

The sensitivity of the solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays for the unavoidable partial shading have elevated a serious concern related to the efficiency of the PV systems. Various methodologies are proposed in the wide range of literature for partial shading mitigation to limit the losses in PV arrays. The most simple and costless mitigation technique is reconfiguration of the arrays on the basis of the position or electrical connection alteration concept. However, most of these techniques are limited to the symmetrical size array that adds demerit to those techniques mainly while implementation in roof-top and large PV systems. Hence, a reconfiguration technique established via physical relocation of the modules (MR) for unsymmetrical PV arrays under shading for power generation improvement is proposed in this work. The proposed technique has been tested for an 8 × 4 array under various shading cases in the MATLAB environment and compared with conventional configurations. From the analysis, it has been concluded that the MR technique shows excellent performance as compared to conventional configurations during all the shading scenarios.