Journals Proceedings

Abstract

In recent years growing concerns on energy sustainability and security have introduced significant research efforts on the penetration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) into present electric power system. Photovoltaic (PV) energy is the most important RES since it is clean, pollution free, and inexhaustible. Solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays in portable applications are often subjected to partial shading and rapid fluctuations of shading. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the effect of partial shading on the maximum power point of various solar photo voltaic array (SPVA) configuration. It is very difficult and costly to conduct the experiment on various array sizes. A MATLAB/SIMULINK based solar module is developed for any required array size, configuration and shading pattern. The proposed model provides sufficient degree of precision without increasing computational effort. Comparative study has been performed on different configuration for various shading patterns on the basis of various partial shading losses and fill factor to investigate which configuration is less prone to various power losses under partial shading condition (PSC).