Performance enhancement and techno-economic analysis of photovoltaic modules under dynamic weather conditions using dual exponential sawtooth method

Abstract

The maximum output power extracted from the Photovoltaic (PV) modules is mainly dependent on ambient temperature and solar irradiance. The photovoltaic modules performance is hugely influenced by the Partial Shading (PS) effect, which results in the reduction of output power. It is caused by shadows of buildings, trees, moving clouds and towers. Under PS conditions, shaded modules receive less irradiance as compared to the unshaded modules, and this leads to overheating of PV array. The present work has been developed by a technique based on Dual Exponential Sawtooth (DES) pattern to reconfigure the PV modules so as to increase the PV output power under PS conditions along with the energy savings and economical aspects. In this technique, the PV modules of Total Cross Tied (TCT) technique and their physical locations are arranged as per DES pattern to distribute the shading effect over the entire array without altering the electrical connections of the PV modules. The DES arrangement gives the enhanced power of 41.48% by reducing the effect on any row of the shaded modules. Further, it provides the details about power sharing percentage as the number of shaded modules increase and also the affect of dynamic shade variation over the entire PV array. The proposed method validation with the existing methods for the analysis, simulation and hardware experimentation shows better performance in terms of mismatch losses and fill factor. Further, the analysis has been extended for units generated and energy savings with each module rating of 1.5 KW on 4 × 4 PV modules.