Disperse Partial Shading Effect of Photovoltaic Array by Means of the Modified Complementary SuDoKu Puzzle Topology

Abstract

This paper presents a novel modified Complementary SuDoKu puzzle (MC-SDKP) topology for the static reconfiguration of photovoltaic (PV) arrays. It was developed with the aim of enhancing the power output of a PV array which is exposed to partially shaded conditions (PSCs). To disperse patterns of both center shading and corner shading, the MC-SDKP technique modified and combined the Optimal SDKP and the Complementary SDKP (C-SDKP) topologies. An 8 × 8 PV array configured with the MC-SDKP topology was exposed to nine different shading patterns, and its performance was compared with that of the other four topologies. The results of the performance evaluation confirmed that, when configured according to the MC-SDKP, the PV array produced the highest average power output among all five topologies, with a 15.07% higher output on average than the total-cross tied. The PV array with the MC-SDKP topology also exhibited the lowest average power loss (1.34%). This study clearly established the effectiveness of the MC-SDKP topology at mitigating the effects of both center and corner shading. The advantages of the MC-SDKP reconfiguration technique are: an increase in extracted power, a reduction in current mismatch losses, an improvement in shade dispersion under conditions of center shading, and good scalability.