Novel Hybrid PV Configurations to Enhance the Output Power and Efficiency by Minimising the Number of Peaks and Mismatching Loss

Abstract

The performance of the Photovoltaic (PV) array is greatly hampered by Partial Shading Conditions (PSCs). The output power and efficiency of the PV array degrades substantially under PSC. The main objective of this research paper is to compare, simulate and analyse the performance of conventional hybrid PV configurations, namely Series Parallel-Total Cross Tied (SP-TCT), Bridge Link-Total Cross Tied (BL-TCT), Honey Comb-Total Cross Tied (HC-TCT) and Bridge Link-Honey Comb (BL-HC) with proposed novel hybrid PV configurations, such as Alternate-Total Cross Tied-Series Parallel (A-TCT-SP), Alternate-Total Cross Tied-Bridge link (A-TCT-BL), Alternate-Total Cross Tied-Honey Comb (A-TCT-HC) and Alternate-Bridge Link-Honey Comb (A-BL-HC) under uniform irradiance and various PSC. All the PV configurations are simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK software and a 6 × 6 array of 7200 Wp is considered for investigation. The performance parameters considered for comparison are maximum output power, maximum output voltage, maximum output current, number of peaks, open circuit voltage, short circuit current, fill factor, shading loss, mismatching power loss and efficiency. Eight different shading patterns namely uneven row, uneven column, diagonal, central, long, and wide, random, L-shaped and triangular are considered for simulations. The performance analysis proves that the proposed A-TCT-BL PV configuration outperforms the conventional hybrid PV configuration in terms of enhanced output power and efficiency. It also significantly reduces the number of peaks and minimises mismatching losses under most of the PSC.

KEYWORDS:

• Hybrid PV configurations
• mismatching loss
• partial shading conditions
• photovoltaics

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aditi Atul Desai

Aditi Atul Desai is a PhD Scholar in the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, at National Institute of Technology Goa, Ponda, Goa, India. She completed BE in E&E from Goa University in 1998, and ME from Goa College of Engineering, Ponda, Goa in 2014. She has been working as assistant professor at GEC since December 2010. Her main area of interest includes renewable energy and electrical machines.

Suresh Mikkili

Suresh Mikkili (M’16, SM’19) received his BTech degree in electrical and electronics engineering (EEE) from SITE, Tadepalligudem, India, in 2006. He received his MTech and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India, in 2008 and 2013, respectively. He is currently working as assistant professor in the Department of EEE at National Institute of Technology Goa, India. He has been Head of the EEE Department at NIT Goa from June 2014 to Nov 2015 and Dean, Student Welfare of NIT Goa from Sept. 2015 to June 2019. His research interests include grid integrated renewable energy systems, power quality issues, smart electric grid, power electronics applications to power systems, and applications of soft computing techniques. He has authored a book entitled “Power Quality Issues: Current Harmonics,” published in CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, August 2015, ISBN 9781498729628. He has reported results of his research (90+ articles) in reputed international journals (SCI/SCI-E) and international conferences. Email: [email protected]