Performance of BIPV system under partial shading condition

Abstract

The Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) system replaces some conventional building materials with photovoltaic modules, making integrating solar energy in towns and cities possible. Unfortunately, partial shading conditions (PSC) are widespread in urban areas and reduce the power produced. There are several solutions for minimizing the effect of static shading by reconfiguring PV module connections. The problem is that shading tends to be dynamic. In this work, using Building Information Modeling (BIM), shading due to neighboring buildings can be predicted, and production performance can be evaluated using optimal reconfiguration methods. Homogeneous and Heterogeneous building distributions are considered as the PV-installation environment in this work. The analysis indicators are hourly power and daily energy losses due to desynchronization. The results of this work show that the Total-Cross-Tied configuration is the most suitable for minimizing the effect of static or dynamic shading among the traditional PV configurations. In the case of dynamic shading, the Sudoku technique is the best compromise. By using the appropriate reconfiguration strategy, the produced energy of the BIPV system can be improved by 5 to 10%.